2004/09/22 by Marco Tarzia, Annalisa Fierro, Mario Nicodemi +1
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Granular flow and fluidized beds #Material Dynamics and Properties #Polysaccharides Composition and Applications #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.93.198002
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 198002 (2004) · to appear on Physical Review Letters
arxiv created 2004/09/22 · openalex publication_date 2004/11/02 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We compare the predictions of two different statistical mechanics approaches, corresponding to different physical measurements, proposed to describe binary granular mixtures subjected to some external driving (continuous shaking or tap dynamics). In particular we analytically solve at a mean field level the partition function of a simple hard sphere lattice model under gravity and focus on the phenomenon of size segregation. We find that the two approaches lead to similar results and seem to coincide in the limit of very low shaking amplitude. However, they give different predictions of the crossovers from Brazil nut effect to reverse Brazil nut effect with respect to the shaking amplitude, which could be detected experimentally.