Spontaneous orbiting of two spheres levitated in a vibrated liquid.

In the absence of gravity, particles can form a suspension in a liquid irrespective of the difference in density between the solid and the liquid. If such a suspension is subjected to vibration, there is relative motion between the particles and the fluid which can lead to self-organization and pattern formation. Here, we describe experiments carried out to investigate the behavior of two identical spheres suspended magnetically in a fluid, mimicking weightless conditions. Under vibration, the spheres mutually attract and, for sufficiently large vibration amplitudes, the spheres are observed to spontaneously orbit each other. The collapse of the experimental data onto a single curve indicates that the instability occurs at a critical value of the streaming Reynolds number. Simulations reproduce the observed behavior qualitatively and quantitatively, and are used to identify the features of the flow that are responsible for this instability.

Partition instability in water-immersed granular systems.

It is well known that a system of grains, vibrated vertically in a cell divided into linked columns, may spontaneously move into just one of the columns due to the inelastic nature of their collisions. Here we study the behavior of a water-immersed system of spherical barium titanate particles in a rectangular cell which is divided into two columns, linked by two connecting holes, one at the top and one at the bottom of the cell. Under vibration the grains spontaneously move into just one of the columns via a gradual transfer of grains through the connecting hole at the base of the cell. We have developed numerical simulations that are able to reproduce this behavior and provide detailed information on the instability mechanism. We use this knowledge to propose a simple analytical model for this fluid-driven partition instability based on two coupled granular beds vibrated within an incompressible fluid.

Instabilities in vertically vibrated fluid-grain systems.

When a bed of fluid-immersed fine grains is exposed to vertical vibration a wealth of phenomena may be observed. At low frequencies a horizontal bed geometry is generally unstable and the bed breaks spatial symmetry, acquiring a tilt. At the same time it undergoes asymmetric granular convection. Fine binary mixtures may separate completely into layers or patterns of stripes. The separated regions may exhibit instabilities in which they undergo wave-like motion or exhibit quasi-periodic oscillations. We briefly review these and a number of related behaviours, identifying the physical mechanisms behind each. Finally, we discuss the magneto-vibratory separation of binary mixtures which results from exposing each component to a different effective gravity and describe the influence of a background fluid on this process.