Towards a continuum theory of clustering in a freely cooling inelastic gas

Abstract

We performed molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the clustering instability of a freely cooling dilute gas of inelastically colliding disks in a quasi-one-dimensional setting. We observe that, as the gas cools, the shear stress becomes negligibly small, and the gas flows by inertia only. Finite-time singularities, intrinsic in such a flow, are arrested only when close-packed clusters are formed. We observe that the late-time dynamics of this system are describable by the Burgers equation with vanishing viscosity, and predict the long-time coarsening behavior.

7 pages, 5 eps figures, to appear in Europhys. Lett

References in corpus (4)

• Influence of correlations on the velocity statistics of scalar granular gases
• The Inelastic Maxwell Model
• Cooling of a lattice granular fluid as an ordering process
• Hydrodynamic singularities and clustering in a freely cooling inelastic gas

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Patterns and Collective Behavior in Granular Media: Theoretical Concepts
• Formation of density singularities in ideal hydrodynamics of freely cooling inelastic gases: a family of exact solutions
• Formation and evolution of density singularities in hydrodynamics of inelastic gases
• Navier-Stokes hydrodynamics of thermal collapse in a freely cooling granular gas
• A nonlinear theory of non-stationary low Mach number channel flows of freely cooling nearly elastic granular gases
• Attempted density blowup in a freely cooling dilute granular gas: hydrodynamics versus molecular dynamics
• The dynamical collision network in granular gases
• Hydrodynamics of granular particles on a line