Effects of surface friction on a two-dimensional granular system: Cooling bound system

Abstract

Experiments performed by Phys. Rev. E 62, 2380 (2000)] on two-particle collisions and dynamics emphasized the importance of the role played by substrate friction, in particular kinetic friction, on the particle dynamics after collisions on a substrate. We present a numerical model which accounts for collisional and surface frictional dissipation and their influence on particle dynamics for a quasi-two-dimensional cooling initially dilute granular material. This model makes the simplifying assumption that the collision dynamics is determined solely by the incoming velocity and angular velocities of the colliding particles. We apply this model to a numerical simulation of a monolayer of monodisperse particles moving on a substrate, enclosed between inelastic walls. We find that surface friction-in particular, kinetic friction-plays a dominant role in determining the dynamics of quasi-two-dimensional multiparticle systems where the particles are in continuous contact with a substrate. Results from simulations performed for different system sizes indicate that surface friction and the inelastic walls lead to clustering of the particles in and near the vicinity of the walls. We find that the rate of decrease of average total kinetic energy is the highest when the majority of the particles have just collided and are experiencing kinetic frictional forces and torques. We also find from our calculations that, on average, particle-wall collisions lead to more dissipation than particle-particle collisions for a single particle for fixed restitutional parameters.