Eur. Phys. J. E (2006) 21: 1-10
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2006-10038-8

Regular Article

Experimental characterization of vibrated granular rings

¹ Center for Nonlinear Studies, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 87545, Los Alamos, NM, USA
² Condensed Matter & Thermal Physics Group, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 87545, Los Alamos, NM, USA
³ Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 87545, Los Alamos, NM, USA

^* e-mail: ecke@lanl.gov

Received: 18 March 2006
Accepted: 6 September 2006
Published online: 10 October 2006

Abstract

We report an experimental study of the statistical properties of vibrated granular rings. In this system, a linked rod and bead metallic chain in the form of a ring is collisionally excited by a vertically oscillating plate. The dynamics are driven primarily by inelastic bead-plate collisions and are simultaneously constrained by the rings' physical connectedness. By imaging many instances of the ring configurations, we measure the ensemble averages and distributions of several physical characteristics on the scale of individual beads and composite ring. We study local properties such as inter-bead separation and inter-bonds angles, and global properties such as the radius of gyration and center-of-mass motion. We characterize scaling with respect to the size of the chain.