Close-packed floating clusters: granular hydrodynamics beyond the freezing point?
Soft Condensed Matter
2009-11-10 v1
Abstract
Monodisperse granular flows often develop regions with hexagonal close packing of particles. We investigate this effect in a system of inelastic hard spheres driven from below by a "thermal" plate. Molecular dynamics simulations show, in a wide range of parameters, a close-packed cluster supported by a low-density region. Surprisingly, the steady-state density profile, including the close-packed cluster part, is well described by a variant of Navier-Stokes granular hydrodynamics (NSGH). We suggest a simple explanation for the success of NSGH beyond the freezing point.
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0305657,
title = {Close-packed floating clusters: granular hydrodynamics beyond the freezing point?},
author = {Baruch Meerson and Thorsten Poeschel and Yaron Bromberg},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0305657},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
4 pages, 5 figures. To appear in Phys. Rev. Lett