Coherent behavior of balls in a vibrated box

Yves Garrabos (1, 2) , Pierre Evesque (3) , Fabien Palencia (1, 2) , Carole Lecoutre-Chabot (1, 2) , Daniel Beysens (4, 5, 2)

1 ICMCB - Institut de Chimie de la Matière Condensée de Bordeaux
2 ESEME : Équipe du Supercritique pour l'Environnement, les Matériaux et l'Espace : Équipe commune CEA-CNRS (2000-2014)
3 MSSMat - Laboratoire de mécanique des sols, structures et matériaux
4 SBT - Service des Basses Températures
5 PMMH - Physique et mécanique des milieux hétérogenes (UMR 7636)

We report observations on very low density limit of one and two balls, vibrated in a box, showing a coherent behavior along a direction parallel to the vibration. This ball behavior causes a significant reduction of the phase space dimension of this billiard-like system. We believe this is because the lowest dissipation process along a non-ergodic orbit eliminates ball rotation and freezes transverse velocity fluctuations. From a two-ball experiment performed under low-gravity conditions, we introduce a “laser-like” ball system as a prototype of a new dynamical model for very low density granular matter at nonequilibrium steady state.

Mots clés: Vibrated ball; Fermi acceleration; Mechanism; Restitution coefficient; Resonant ball

Domaines: Matériaux; Mécanique statistique [cond-mat.stat-mech]

Yves Garrabos, Pierre Evesque, Fabien Palencia, Carole Lecoutre-Chabot, Daniel Beysens. Coherent behavior of balls in a vibrated box. 2006. ⟨hal-00115836⟩