Citation

Taberlet N, Morris SW, McElwaine JN. Phys. Rev. Lett. 2007; 99(6): 068003.

Affiliation

DAMTP, University of Cambridge, Wilberforce Road, CB3 0WA Cambridge, United Kingdom. Nicolas.taberlet@ens-lyon.fr

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, American Physical Society)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

17930868

Abstract

We report laboratory experiments on rippled granular surfaces formed under rolling wheels. Ripples appear above a critical speed and drift slowly in the driving direction. Ripples coarsen as they saturate and exhibit ripple creation and destruction events. All of these effects are captured qualitatively by 2D soft-particle simulations in which a disk rolls over smaller disks in a periodic box. The simulations show that compaction and segregation are inessential to the ripple phenomenon. We describe a simplified scaling model which gives some insight into the mechanism of the instability.

Language: en