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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 19: Franco-German Session on Granular Matter I

DY 19.3: Vortrag

Dienstag, 10. März 2026, 10:15–10:30, HÜL/S186

granular drag towards zero gravity — •tianhui liao¹, tivadar pongo¹, jinchen zhao¹, simeon vöelkel², valentin dichtl², raúl c. hidalgo³, and kai huang^1,2 — ¹Collective Dynamics Lab, Division of Natural and Applied Sciences, Duke Kunshan University, 215306 Kunshan, Jiangsu, China — ²Experimentalphysik V, Universität Bayreuth, 95440 Bayreuth, Germany — ³Department of Physics and Applied Mathematics, University of Navarra, 31009 Pamplona, Spain

The role of gravity on the drag force F_d acting on a projectile impacting granular media is investigated experimentally using embedded inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensor and numerically with discrete element method (DEM) simulations. As gravity approaches zero, the inertial drag plays a dominating role, leading to qualitatively different scaling laws and cavity dynamics. Similarly to fluid dynamics, we define a dimensionless granular drag coefficient C_gd, which yields a constant of ≈ 1.2 ± 0.2 under microgravity, and a term inversely proportional to the impact velocity v₀ is added in the presence of gravity. This connection to fluid drag sheds light not only on a wide range of applications of granular media in space exploration, but also on drag force in non-Newtonian fluids from a first principle perspective.

Keywords: granular drag; microgravity; complex fluids; inertial measurement unit; discrete element method