Confined granular gases under the influence of vibrating walls

TL;DR

This paper models the behavior of confined granular gases between vibrating walls, deriving kinetic equations and validating them with simulations, revealing insights into energy distribution and stability in such systems.

Contribution

It introduces a kinetic model for dilute confined granular gases with vibrating walls, incorporating a two-temperature Gaussian approximation and comparing results with molecular dynamics simulations.

Findings

Good agreement between theory and simulations across various parameters.

Identification of conditions leading to homogeneous states and instabilities.

Analysis of pressure tensor related to system stability.

Abstract

The dynamics of a system composed of inelastic hard spheres or disks that are confined between two parallel vertically vibrating walls is studied (the vertical direction is defined as the direction perpendicular to the walls). The distance between the two walls is supposed to be larger than twice the diameter of the particles so that the particles can pass over each other, but still much smaller than the dimensions of the walls. Hence, the system can be considered to be quasi-two-dimensional (quasi-one-dimensional) in the hard spheres (disks) case. For dilute systems, a closed evolution equation for the one-particle distribution function is formulated that takes into account the effects of the confinement. Assuming the system is spatially homogeneous, the kinetic equation is solved approximating the distribution function by a two-temperatures (horizontal and vertical) gaussian distribution. The obtained evolution equations for the partial temperatures are solved, finding a very good agreement with Molecular Dynamics simulation results for a wide range of the parameters (inelasticity, height and density) for states whose projection over a plane parallel to the walls is homogeneous. In the stationary state, where the energy lost in collisions is compensated by the energy injected by the walls, the pressure tensor in the horizontal direction is analyzed and its relation with an instability of the homogenous state observed in the simulations is discussed.