Molecular dynamics simulations of vibrated granular gases

Alain Barrat, Emmanuel Trizac

Published 2002-07-10Version 1

We present molecular dynamics simulations of mono- or bidisperse inelastic granular gases driven by vibrating walls, in two dimensions (without gravity). Because of the energy injection at the boundaries, a situation often met experimentally, density and temperature fields display heterogeneous profiles in the direction perpendicular to the walls. A general equation of state for an arbitrary mixture of fluidized inelastic hard spheres is derived and successfully tested against numerical data. Single-particle velocity distribution functions with non-Gaussian features are also obtained, and the influence of various parameters (inelasticity coefficients, density...) analyzed. The validity of a recently proposed Random Restitution Coefficient model is assessed through the study of projected collisions onto the direction perpendicular to that of energy injection. For the binary mixture, the non-equipartition of translational kinetic energy is studied and compared both to experimental data and to the case of homogeneous energy injection (``stochastic thermostat''). The rescaled velocity distribution functions are found to be very similar for both species.