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Sudden Collapse of a Granular Cluster

Devaraj van der Meer·Ko van der Weele·Detlef Lohse
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Abstract

Single clusters in a vibro-fluidized granular gas in N connected compartments become unstable at strong shaking. They are experimentally shown to collapse very abruptly. The observed cluster lifetime (as a function of the driving intensity) is analytically calculated within a flux model, making use of the self-similarity of the process. After collapse, the cluster diffuses out into the uniform distribution in a self-similar way, with an anomalous diffusion exponent 1/3.

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Devaraj van der Meer, Ko van der Weele, Detlef Lohse. 2002-04-12. Sudden Collapse of a Granular Cluster. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.88.174302

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