Evidence for intermittency in a granular medium: experiments and simulations.

Abstract

We present the first experimental demonstration of intermittency in a granular medium. The medium consists of magnets embedded within spheres. These spheres are placed in a horizontal Petri dish where they roll by virtue of an alternating, homogenous magnetic field. Due to collisions with the wall, clustering leads to self-organization into ring pieces circulating along the wall. The intermi ttent behaviour consists of an aperiodical alternation of this circular motion with a gaslike state extended over the entire dish. Molecular dynamic simulations agree with observations

Keywords

• granular media
• intermittency
• self-organization
• [info.info-dm] computer science [cs]/discrete mathematics [cs.dm]
• [math.math-co] mathematics [math]/combinatorics [math.co]
• [nlin.nlin-cg] nonlinear sciences [physics]/cellular automata and lattice gases [nlin.cg]
• [info.info-hc] computer science [cs]/human-computer interaction [cs.hc]