A freely cooling granular gas with velocity dependent restitution coefficient is studied in one dimension. The restitution coefficient becomes near elastic when the relative velocity of the colliding particles is less than a velocity scale $δ$. Different statistical quantities namely density distribution, occupied and empty cluster length distributions, and spatial density and velocity correlation functions, are obtained using event driven molecular dynamic simulations. We compare these with the corresponding quantities of the sticky gas (inelastic gas with zero coefficient of restitution). We find that in the inhomogeneous cooling regime, for times smaller than a crossover time $t_1$ where $t_1 \sim δ^{-1}$, the behaviour of the granular gas is equivalent to that of the sticky gas. When $δ\rt 0$, then $t_1 \rt \infty$ and hence, the results support an earlier claim that the freely cooling inelastic gas is described by the inviscid Burgers equation. For a real granular gas with finite $δ$, the existence of the time scale $t_1$ shows that, for large times, the granular gas is not described by the inviscid Burgers equation.
The time evolution and stationary values of the entropy per particle of a homogeneous freely cooling granular gas, relative to the maximum entropy consistent with the instantaneous translational and rotational temperatures, is analyzed by means of a Sonine approximation involving fourth-degree cumulants. The results show a rich variety of dependencies of the relative entropy on time and on the coefficients of normal and tangential restitution, including a peculiar behavior in the quasi-smooth limit.
Finding the proper entropy-like Lyapunov functional associated with the inelastic Boltzmann equation for an isolated freely cooling granular gas is a still unsolved challenge. The original $H$-theorem hypotheses do not fit here and the $H$-functional presents some additional measure problems that are solved by the Kullback--Leibler divergence (KLD) of a reference velocity distribution function from the actual distribution. The right choice of the reference distribution in the KLD is crucial for the latter to qualify or not as a Lyapunov functional, the asymptotic "homogeneous cooling state" (H…
Whereas the original Boltzmann's $H$-theorem applies to elastic collisions, its rigorous generalization to the inelastic case is still lacking. Nonetheless, it has been conjectured in the literature that the relative entropy of the velocity distribution function with respect to the homogeneous cooling state (HCS) represents an adequate nonequilibrium entropy-like functional for an isolated freely cooling granular gas. In this work, we present molecular dynamics results reinforcing this conjecture and rejecting the choice of the Maxwellian over the HCS as a reference distribution. These results…
Dry, freely evolving granular materials in a dilute gaseous state coalesce into dense clusters only due to dissipative interactions. This clustering transition is important for a number of problems ranging from geophysics to cosmology. Here we show that the evolution of a dilute, freely cooling granular gas is determined in a universal way by the ratio of inertial flow and thermal velocities, that is, the Mach number. Theoretical calculations and direct numerical simulations of the granular Navier--Stokes equations show that irrespective of the coefficient of restitution, density or initial ve…
We compute the mean square displacement (MSD) of intruders immersed in a freely cooling granular gas made up of smooth inelastic hard spheres. In general, intruders and particles of the granular gas are assumed to have different mechanical properties, implying that non-equipartition of energy must be accounted for in the computation of the diffusion coefficient $D$. In the hydrodynamic regime, the time decay of the granular temperature $T$ of the cooling granular gas is known to be dictated by Haff's law; the corresponding decay of the intruder's collision frequency entails a time decrease of …
A polydisperse granular gas made of inelastic and rough hard disks is considered. Focus is laid on the kinetic-theory derivation of the partial energy production rates and the total cooling rate as functions of the partial densities and temperatures (both translational and rotational) and of the parameters of the mixture (masses, diameters, moments of inertia, and mutual coefficients of normal and tangential restitution). The results are applied to the homogeneous cooling state of the system and the associated nonequipartition of energy among the different components and degrees of freedom. It…
Starting from a recent derivation of the energy production rates in terms of the number of translational and rotational degrees of freedom, a comparative study on different granular temperatures in gas mixtures of inelastic and rough disks or spheres is carried out. Both the homogeneous freely cooling state and the state driven by a stochastic thermostat are considered. It is found that the relaxation number of collisions per particle is generally smaller for disks than for spheres, the mean angular velocity relaxing more rapidly than the temperature ratios. In the asymptotic regime of the und…
Neutral grains made of the same dielectric material can attain considerable charges due to collisions and generate long-range interactions. We perform molecular dynamic simulations in three dimensions for a dilute, freely-cooling granular gas of viscoelastic particles that exchange charges during collisions. As compared to the case of clustering of viscoelastic particles solely due to dissipation, we find that the electrostatic interactions due to collisional charging alter the characteristic size, morphology and growth rate of the clusters. The average cluster size grows with time as a power …
Grad's method of moments is employed to develop higher-order Grad's moment equations---up to first 26-moments---for granular gases within the framework of the (inelastic) Boltzmann equation. The homogeneous cooling state of a freely cooling granular gas is investigated with the Grad's 26-moment equations in a semi-linearized setting and it is shown that the granular temperature in the homogeneous cooling state still decays according to Haff's law while the other higher-order moments decay on a faster time scale. The constitutive relations for stress and heat flux (the Navier--Stokes and Fourie…
