Microgravity and Dissipative Granular Gas in a vibrated container: a gas with an asymmetric speed distribution in the vibration direction, but with a null mean speed everywhere

Abstract: The main topic of this paper (part 4) is the interpretation of data from extended simulations published in previous Poudres & Grains (see P&G 17, #1 to #18) concerning the dynamics of N equal-size spheres in a 3d rectangular cell excited along Oz in 0 gravity.(N=100, 500, 1000, 1200, 2000, 3000, 4000, 4500). Different Oz excitation kinds have been used (symmetric and non symmetric bi-parabolic, symmetric and non symmetric saw teeth, thermal wall). No rotation is included, dissipation is introduced via a restitution coefficient e= -V'n/Vn, where V'n and Vn are the relative ball speed along normal to ball centres after and before collision. It is proved that the local speed distribution along z is fundamentally dissymmetric in most part of the cell while the mean local speed is 0. This demonstrates the inability of a model based on a thermal bath (with a single local temperature) to describe this dissipative-granular-gas-system, even when assuming that this temperature varies in space. The other (1-3) parts sum up few results obtained in the very low density regime.