An experimental study of a granular gas fluidized by vibrations
E. Falcon1, S. Fauve1 and C. Laroche2
1 Laboratoire de Physique Statistique, École Normale
Supérieure, 24 rue Lhomond, 75231 Paris cedex 05, France 2 Laboratoire de Physique, École Normale
Supérieure de Lyon, 46 allée d'Italie, 69364 Lyon cedex
07, France
Reference:
"Granular Gases", in T. Pöschel
and
S. Luding (Eds.), Vol. 564 of Lectures Notes in Physics.
Springer-Verlag, Berlin, p. 244-253 (2001)
ISSN: 1616-6361
Abstract:
We report experimental results on the behavior of an ensemble of
inelastically colliding particles, excited by a vibrated piston in a
vertical cylinder. When the particle number is increased, we observe a
transition from a regime where the particles have erratic motions
(granular ``gas'') to a collective behavior where all the particles
bounce like a nearly solid body. In the gaslike regime, we measure the
pressure at constant volume, and the bed expansion at constant external
pressure, as a function of the number N of particles. We also
measure the density of particles as a function of the altitude,
and find that the ``atmosphere'' is exponential far enough from the
piston.
From these three independent measurements, we determine a ``state
equation''
between pressure, volume, particle number and the vibration amplitude
and
frequency.
