• Editors' Suggestion

Scaling behavior of coarsening Faraday heaps

Henk Jan van Gerner, Ko van der Weele, Devaraj van der Meer, and Martin A. van der Hoef
Phys. Rev. E 92, 042203 – Published 16 October 2015
PDFHTMLExport Citation

Abstract

When a layer of sand is vertically shaken, the surface spontaneously breaks up in a landscape of small conical “Faraday heaps,” which merge into larger ones on an ever increasing time scale. We propose a model for the heap dynamics and show analytically that the mean lifetime of the transient state with N heaps scales as N2. When there is an abundance of sand, such that the vibrating plate always remains completely covered, this means that the average diameter of the heaps grows as t1/2. Otherwise, when the sand is less plentiful and parts of the plate get depleted during the coarsening process, the average diameter of the heaps grows more slowly, namely as t1/3. This result compares well with experimental observations.

  • Figure
  • Figure
  • Figure
  • Figure
  • Received 28 May 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.92.042203

©2015 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Henk Jan van Gerner1,2, Ko van der Weele3, Devaraj van der Meer1, and Martin A. van der Hoef1

  • 1Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Twente, NL-7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands
  • 2National Aerospace Laboratory, P.O. Box 153, NL-8300 AD Emmeloord, The Netherlands
  • 3Department of Mathematics, University of Patras, 26500 Patras, Greece

Article Text (Subscription Required)

Click to Expand

Supplemental Material (Subscription Required)

Click to Expand

References (Subscription Required)

Click to Expand
Issue

Vol. 92, Iss. 4 — October 2015

Reuse & Permissions
Access Options
Author publication services for translation and copyediting assistance advertisement

Authorization Required


×
×

Images

×

Sign up to receive regular email alerts from Physical Review E

Log In

Cancel
×

Search


Article Lookup

Paste a citation or DOI

Enter a citation
×