Continuum-Type Stability Balloon in Oscillated Granular Layers

The stability of convection rolls in a fluid heated from below is limited by secondary instabilities, including the skew-varicose and crossroll instabilities. We observe a stability boundary defined by these same instabilities in stripe patterns in a vertically oscillated granular layer. Molecular dynamics simulations show that the mechanism of the skew-varicose instability in granular patterns is similar to that in convection. These results suggest that pattern formation in granular media can be described by continuum models analogous to those used in fluid systems.