Eur. Phys. J. E (2008) 25: 201-212
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2007-10281-5

Regular Article

Species segregation in one-dimensional granular-system simulations

¹ LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, CNRS, UPMC, Université Paris Diderot, 5 Place Jules Janssen, 92195, Meudon, France
² Dipartimento di Astronomia e Scienza dello Spazio, Largo Enrico Fermi 2, 50125, Firenze, Italy

^* e-mail: filippo.pantellini@obspm.fr

Received: 9 July 2007
Accepted: 29 January 2008
Published online: 18 March 2008

Abstract

We present one-dimensional molecular dynamics simulations of a two-species, initially uniform, freely evolving granular system. Colliding particles swap their relative position with a 50% probability allowing for the initial spatial ordering of the particles to evolve in time and frictional forces to operate. Unlike one-dimensional systems of identical particles, two-species one-dimensional systems of quasi-elastic particles are ergodic and the particles' velocity distributions tend to evolve towards Maxwell-Boltzmann distributions. Under such conditions, standard fluid equations with merely an additional sink term in the energy equation, reflecting the non-elasticity of the interparticle collisions, provide an excellent means to investigate the system's evolution. According to the predictions of fluid theory we find that the clustering instability is dominated by a non-propagating mode at a wavelength of the order 10πL/Nɛ , where N is the total number of particles, L the spatial extent of the system and ɛ the inelasticity coefficient. The typical fluid velocities at the time of inelastic collapse are seen to be supersonic, unless Nɛ ≲ 10π . Species segregation, driven by the frictional force occurs as a result of the strong temperature gradients within clusters which pushes the light particles towards the clusters' edges and the heavy particles towards the center. Segregation within clusters is complete at the time of inelastic collapse.