Equilibration of granular subsystems

TL;DR

This study experimentally explores the steady states of two granular materials exchanging volume under agitation, revealing universal relationships and effective parameters that are independent of material differences, informing the development of a granular equation of state.

Contribution

It uncovers a universal relationship between packing fraction and fluctuations and identifies an intensive parameter consistent across different granular materials.

Findings

Materials-independent relationship between packing fraction and fluctuations

Equal effective diffusion coefficients in both subsystems

Structural relaxation time varies widely while other parameters remain equal

Abstract

We experimentally investigate the steady states of two granular assemblies differing in their material properties and allowed to exchange volume with each other under external agitation in the vicinity of their jamming transition. We extract the statistics of various static and dynamic quantities, and uncover a materials-independent relationship between the average packing fraction and its fluctuations. This relationship defines an intensive parameter which decouples from the volume statistics, and remarkably takes the same value in both subsystems. We also observe that an effective diffusion coefficient also takes the same value in each subsystem, even as the structural relaxation time increases over several orders of magnitude. These observations provide strong constraints on the eventual establishment of a granular equation of state.