Dresden 2006 – scientific programme

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DY: Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 25: Granuar Matter and Contact Dynamics I

DY 25.3: Talk

Tuesday, March 28, 2006, 15:00–15:15, SCH 251

A granular meltdown — •Andreas Götzendorfer¹, Chi-Hwang Tai², Christof A. Kruelle¹, and Ingo Rehberg¹ — ¹Experimentalphysik V, Universität Bayreuth, 95440 Bayreuth — ²Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Central University, Chung-Li 32054, Taiwan

The behaviour of vibrated granular matter is of paramount importance to many industrial processes, and is therefore studied extensively by engineers. But also in the physics community the fluidization of granular beds by vibration has evolved into a very active field of research during the last fifteen years. In our experiments we submitted a two-dimensional granular packing to vertical sinusoidal container oscillations. The initially close packed bed consists of six particle layers. With increasing shaking amplitude at first the particles close to the free surface start to become mobile. When a critical value of the forcing strength is reached the remaining crystalline structure suddenly breaks up and the bed fluidizes completely, causing the centre of mass height to increases by leaps and bounds. Further investigating into this discontinuous transition we examine the distribution of particles and their displacements as functions of the forcing strength.