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We study experimentally how the bouncing dynamics of a hollow ball on a vibrating plate is modified when it is partially filled with liquid or grains. Whereas empty and liquid-filled balls display a dominant chaotic dynamics, a ball with grains exhibits a rich variety of stationary states, determined by the grain size and filling volume. In the collisional regime, i.e., when the energy injected to the system is mainly dissipated by interparticle collisions, an unexpected period-1 orbit appears independently of the vibration conditions, over a wide range. This is a self-regulated state driven by the formation and collapse of a granular gas within the ball during one cycle. In the frictional regime (dissipation dominated by friction), the grains move collectively and generate different patterns and steady modes: oscillons, waves, period doubling, etc. From a phase diagram and a geometrical analysis, we deduce that these modes are the result of a coupling (synchronization) between the vibrating plate frequency and the trajectory followed by the particles inside the cavity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the spontaneous formation of granular towers produced when dry sand is poured on a wet sand bed. When the liquid content of the bed exceeds a threshold value W", the impacting grains have a nonzero probability to stick on the wet grains due to instantaneous liquid bridges created during the impact. The trapped grains become wet by the capillary ascension of water and the process continues, giving rise to stable narrow towers. The growth velocity is determined by the surface liquid content which decreases exponentially as the tower height augments. This self-assembly mechanism (only observed in the funicular and capillary regimes) could theoretically last while the capillary rise of water is possible; however, the structure collapses before reaching this limit. The collapse occurs when the weight of the tower surpasses the cohesive stress at its base. The cohesive stress increases as the liquid content of the bed is reduced. Consequently, the highest towers are found just above W". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Impact experiments in granular media are usually performed with solid projectiles that do not fragment at all. Contrastingly, we study here the morphology produced by the impact of spherical granular projectiles whose structure is utterly lost after collision. Simple and complex craters are observed, depending on the packing fraction of the balls. Their diameters D and depths z are analyzed as a function of the drop height h. We find the same power law D ∝ h1/4 obtained with solid spheres, but a discontinuity at a certain threshold height, related to the cohesive energy of the projectiles, shows up. Counterintuitively, instead of a monotonic increase with the collisional energy, z becomes constant above this threshold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of a spherical projectile on an evened-out granular bed generates a uniform ejecta of material and a crater with a raised circular rim. Recently, Sabuwala et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 264501 (2018)] found that the uniform blanket of ejecta changes to a set of radial streaks when a spherical body impacts on an undulated granular surface, being a plausible explanation to the enigmatic ray systems on planetary bodies. Here, we show that ray systems can also be generated by the impact of nonspherical projectiles on a flat granular surface. This is a reasonable explanation considering that meteorites are rarely spherical. Moreover, by impacting bodies of different geometries, we show that the crater size follows the same power-law scaling with the impact energy found for spherical projectiles, and the crater rim becomes circular as the impact energy is increased regardless of the projectile shape, which helps to understand why most impact craters in nature are rounded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Rapid Communication reports on an experimental study of granular craters formed by a mechanism, namely, optical energy, via a pulsed laser focused onto the surface of a granular bed. This represents an insight into granular cratering for two reasons; first, there is no physical contact between the initiation mechanism and the granular media (as typical for impact or explosion craters). Second, the resulting craters are millimetric in scale, which facilitates a test of energy scalings down to a previously unobserved lengthscale. Indeed, we observe a range of energy scalings conforming to Dc∼Eβ with β≈0.31-0.43 depending on the characteristics of the granular media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on an experimental investigation of craters generated by explosions at the surface of a model granular bed. Following the initial blast, a pressure wave propagates through the bed, producing high-speed ejecta of grains and ultimately a crater. We analyzed the crater morphology in the context of large-scale explosions and other cratering processes. The process was analyzed in the context of large-scale explosions, and the crater morphology was compared with those resulting from other cratering processes in the same energy range. From this comparison, we deduce that craters formed through different mechanisms can exhibit fine surface features depending on their origin, at least at the laboratory scale. Moreover, unlike laboratory-scale craters produced by the impact of dense spheres, the diameter and depth do not follow a 1/4-power-law scaling with energy, rather the exponent observed herein is approximately 0.30, as has also been found in large-scale events. Regarding the ejecta curtain of grains, its expansion obeys the same time dependence followed by shock waves produced by underground explosions. Finally, from experiments in a two-dimensional system, the early cavity growth is analyzed and compared to a recent study on explosions at the surface of water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An intruder penetrating into a granular column experiences a depth-dependent friction force F(z). Different regimes of F(z) have been measured depending on the experimental design: a nearly linear dependence for shallow penetrations, total saturation at large depths, and an exponential increase when the intruder approaches the bottom of the granular bed. We report here an experiment that allows us to measure the different regimes in a single run during the quasistatic descent of a sphere in a light granular medium. From the analysis of the resistance in the saturation zone, it was found that F(z) follows a cube-power-law dependence on the intruder diameter and an exponential increase with the packing fraction of the bed. Moreover, we determine the critical mass mc required to observe infinite penetration and its dependence on the above parameters. Finally, we use our results to estimate the final penetration depth reached by intruders of masses m

When rough grains in loose packing conditions are discharged from a silo, a conical depression with a single slope is formed at the surface. We observed that the increase of volume fraction generates a more complex depression, characterized by two angles of discharge: one at the bottom similar to the angle of repose and a considerably larger upper angle. The change in slope appears at the boundary between a dense stagnant region at the periphery and the central flowing channel formed over the aperture. Since the material in the latter zone is always fluidized, the flow rate is unaffected by the initial packing of the bed. On the other hand, the contrast between both angles is markedly smaller when smooth particles of the same size and density are used, which reveals that high packing fraction and friction must combine to produce the observed geometry. Our results show that the surface profile helps to identify by simple visual inspection the packing conditions of a granular bed, being useful to prevent undesirable collapses during silo discharge in industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study experimentally the cratering process due to the explosion and collapse of a pressurized air cavity inside a sand bed. The process starts when the cavity breaks and the liberated air then rises through the overlying granular layer and produces a violent eruption; it depressurizes the cavity and, as the gas is released, the sand sinks under gravity, generating a crater. We find that the crater dimensions are totally determined by the cavity volume; the pressure does not affect the morphology because the air is expelled vertically during the eruption. In contrast with impact craters, the rim is flat and, regardless of the cavity shape, it evolves into a circle as the cavity depth increases or if the chamber is located deep enough inside the bed, which could explain why most of the subsidence craters observed in nature are circular. Moreover, for shallow spherical cavities, a collimated jet emerges from the collision of sand avalanches that converge concentrically at the bottom of the depression, revealing that collapse under gravity is the main mechanism driving the jet formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interesting collective motion emerges when several heavy intruder disks fall in a loose packed, quasi-two-dimensional granular bed of extremely light grains [F. Pacheco-Vázquez and J. C. Ruiz-Suárez, Nat. Commun. 1, 123 (2010)]. In particular, when two disks impact side by side, they initially repel and then they attract each other until they finally stop. Here we perform experiments and discrete-element soft-particle simulations to determine the range of action and the origin of these attractive and repulsive flow-mediated forces. We find that (1) the drag force on the disks fluctuate with a characteristic length linked to force chains that build up and break; (2) the repulsive force is present when the separation of the intruder disks is less than 6 times the size of the grains of the granular bed, which is the size of an aperture that allows a continuous discharge flow from a container; (3) the attractive force has a range of action between 5 and 6 times the size of the intruder disks; and (4) attraction exists only when intruders move faster than 1 m/s. These results suggest that repulsion originates from jamming of grains between intruders, and it supports the idea that attraction could be due to a "granular pressure" drop in the region between intruders caused by a high flow velocity of grains: a Bernoulli-like effect. However, our results do not rule out other mechanisms of interaction, like fluctuation-induced forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]