Granular Matter

We are dealing with friction from the viewpoint of granular material research, where heaps can maintain their shape only in the presence of Coulomb friction.

Die Neigung dieses Trichters ist viel steiler als bei den anderen Beispielen. Wir sehen hier das Massenflussregime, bei dem die Partikel wie eine Flüssigkeit durch den Auslass strömen.

A rotating drum with a single particle. You can find more information in this publications.

A rotating drum with a mixture of many small and a few large particles.

In general, collisions makes granular materials most interesting. For this movie, I tried to avoid collisions!

This  example shows a hopper with a small outlet and a few large particles. The hopper blocks twice. The clogging is removed by tapping the hopper, so that all particles are accelerated upwards.

This setup shows the behavior of granular material in a vibrating box. Because of the small wall, the system can break symmetry.

This film shows the collapse of a house of cards. The setup file was created with the help of xfig. Without the implementation of a Coulomb/static friction law, the initial configuration would not be stable.

The Galton Board is a device to explain binomial distributions. It consists of a board that has a large amount of pins fixed to it. These pins are arranged in regular horizontal rows so that the pins form a triangle with its base at the bottom of the board.

Penguins, penguins, everywhere are pinguins... A movie for the former supercomputer Tina.