Defects mediated convection
The video beside shows the wall friction induced convection in a monolayer of cohesionless dry spheres. Together with Andrea Fortini from Surrey/UK, we investigate how topological defects inside influence the onset of convection, combining molecular dynamic simulations and experiments.
We found that wall-induced convection starts before the granular bed starts to melt ( in the bouncing-bed regime where the granular layer moves together as a single object. Moreover, the topological defects inside the initial packing of particles influence strongly the onset of convection. The next step questions are:
- How to modify the boundary condition to control convections?
- How does wetting liquid play the role?
- How does convection influence melting?
Reference
- “Role of defects in the onset of wall-induced granular convection”, Andrea Fortini and Kai Huang Phys.Rev. E 91, 032206 (2015), doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.91.032206 arXiv:1410.1291
