Dynamics of vibrated Granular Monolayers,
X. Nie, E. Ben-Naim, and S.Y. Chen
We study statistical properties of vibrated granular monolayers
using molecular dynamics simulations. We show that at high
excitation strengths, the system is in a gas state, particle motion
is isotropic, and the velocity distributions are Gaussian. As the
vibration strength is lowered the system's dimensionality is reduced
from three to two. Below a critical excitation strength, a
gas-cluster phase occurs, and the velocity distribution becomes
bimodal. In this phase, the system consists of clusters of immobile
particles arranged in close-packed hexagonal arrays, and gas
particles whose energy equals the first excited state of an isolated
particle on a vibrated plate.
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