Dynamics of the wet granular Leidenfrost phenomenon.

By event-driven molecular dynamics simulations, we study the Leidenfrost effect for wet granular matter driven from below. In marked contrast to all earlier studies on other fluids, the dense plug hovering on the hot gas cushion undergoes an undamped oscillation. The location of the Hopf bifurcation leading to this oscillation is strongly dependent on the inelasticity of the grain impacts. The vertical separation into a gas phase with a condensed plug hovering above it is particularly pronounced due to the cohesiveness of the granulate. For sufficiently large system sizes, the Rayleigh-Taylor instability terminates the oscillatory state at late times.

Emergent surface tension in vibrated, noncohesive granular media.

We describe experiments and simulations carried out to investigate spinodal decomposition in a vibrated, dry granular system. The dynamics is found to be similar to that of systems evolving under curvature-driven diffusion, which suggests the presence of an effective surface tension. By studying quasi-2D droplets in the steady state, we find behavior consistent with Laplace's equation, demonstrating the existence of an actual surface tension. Detailed measurements of the pressure tensor in the interfacial region show that the surface tension results predominantly from an anisotropy in the kinetic energy part of the pressure tensor, in contrast to thermodynamic systems where it arises from either the attractive interaction between particles or entropic considerations.

Liquid-gas phase separation in confined vibrated dry granular matter.

A new phase transition is observed experimentally in a dry granular gas subject to vertical vibration between two horizontal plates. Molecular dynamics simulations of this system allow us to investigate the observed phase separation in detail. We find a high-density, low temperature liquid, coexisting with a low-density, high temperature gas moving coherently. The importance of the coherent motion for phase separation is investigated using frequency modulation.

Dilute wet granular particles: nonequilibrium dynamics and structure formation.

We investigate a gas of wet granular particles covered by a thin liquid film. The dynamic evolution is governed by two-particle interactions, which are mainly due to interfacial forces in contrast to dry granular gases. When two wet grains collide, a capillary bridge is formed and stays intact up to a certain distance of withdrawal when the bridge ruptures, dissipating a fixed amount of energy. A freely cooling system is shown to undergo a nonequilibrium dynamic phase transition from a state with mainly single particles and fast cooling to a state with growing aggregates such that bridge rupture becomes a rare event and cooling is slow. In the early stage of cluster growth, aggregation is a self-similar process with a fractal dimension of the aggregates approximately equal to Df approximately 2 . At later times, a percolating cluster is observed which ultimately absorbs all the particles. The final cluster is compact on large length scales, but fractal with Df approximately 2 on small length scales.

Cooling and aggregation in wet granulates.

Wet granular materials are characterized by a defined bond energy in their particle interaction such that breaking a bond implies an irreversible loss of a fixed amount of energy. Associated with the bond energy is a nonequilibrium transition, setting in as the granular temperature falls below the bond energy. The subsequent aggregation of particles into clusters is shown to be a self-similar growth process with a cluster size distribution that obeys scaling. In the early phase of aggregation the clusters are fractals with D{f}=2, for later times we observe gelation. We use simple scaling arguments to derive the temperature decay in the early and late stages of cooling and verify our results with event-driven simulations.