Sudden Collapse of a Granular Cluster

Devaraj van der Meer, Ko van der Weele, and Detlef Lohse
Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 174302 – Published 15 April 2002
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Abstract

Single clusters in a vibro-fluidized granular gas in N connected compartments become unstable at strong shaking. They are experimentally shown to collapse very abruptly. The observed cluster lifetime (as a function of the driving intensity) is analytically calculated within a flux model, making use of the self-similarity of the process. After collapse, the cluster diffuses out into the uniform distribution in a self-similar way, with an anomalous diffusion exponent 1/3.

  • Received 6 July 2001

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.88.174302

©2002 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Devaraj van der Meer, Ko van der Weele, and Detlef Lohse

  • Department of Applied Physics and J. M. Burgers Centre for Fluid Dynamics, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands

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Vol. 88, Iss. 17 — 29 April 2002

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