Experimental Study of Three-compartmentalized Granular Follower
Resource
Journal of the Physical Society of Japan,77,084403-0.
Journal
Journal of the Physical Society of Japan
Pages
84403
Date Issued
2008-08
Date
2008-08
Author(s)
Abstract
This study presents experimental evidence for an extended granular clock, called the “granular follower”, in a vertically vibrated three-compartmentalized system with a bi-disperse granular mixture. In every skip of the mixture, small spheres first move to one of the empty compartments, and large spheres then follow the small spheres to the same zone. We present the phase diagram of the container width and large-sphere number, which exhibits three different regions, namely, one-clustering, granular follower, and two-clustering states. The mechanisms of the three states are explained by an expeller-trapper model, in that there are two minimum number densities: first for small spheres to cluster in one of the two empty compartments and second for large spheres to effectively expel small spheres. Furthermore, in this study, we also observe a granular follower in a three-compartmentalized system with tri-disperse spheres, revealing that the granular follower is not only an extension of the granular clock but also the most general case of granular oscillation.
Type
journal article