Clustering and melting in a wet granular monolayer

TL;DR

This study experimentally explores how a wet granular monolayer behaves under vertical vibrations, revealing clustering, reorganizing, and melting transitions driven by attractive interactions and characterized by order parameters and kinetic energy.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the collective dynamics and phase transitions of wet granular monolayers under vibration, highlighting the continuous melting process from defect-driven nucleation.

Findings

Identification of clustering, reorganizing, and melting regimes

Melting transition is continuous and defect-driven

Characterization using bond-orientational order and kinetic energy

Abstract

We investigate experimentally the collective behavior of a wet granular monolayer under vertical vibrations. The spherical particles are partially wet such that there are short-ranged attractive interactions between adjacent particles. As the vibration strength increases, clustering, reorganizing and melting regimes are identified subsequently through a characterization with the bond-orientational order parameters and the mean kinetic energy of the particles. The melting transition is found to be a continuous process starting from the defects inside the crystal.