DOI: 10.1209/epl/i2002-00295-7
Europhys. Lett., 60 (6) , pp. 854-860 (2002)

Rotationally driven gas of inelastic rough spheres

R. Cafiero¹, S. Luding^{2, 3} and H. J. Herrmann<sup>1, 2

1</sup>  PMMH, École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles (ESPCI) 10 rue Vauquelin, 75251 Paris Cedex 05, France
²  Institute for Computer Applications 1 Pfaffenwaldring 27, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany
³  Particle Technology, DelftChemTech, TU Delft Julianalaan 136, 2628 CJ Delft, The Netherlands

(Received 16 July 2002; accepted in final form 3 October 2002)

Abstract
We study a gas of inelastic rough spheres confined on a 2D plane, driven on the rotational degrees of freedom. Event-driven molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are compared to mean-field (MF) predictions with surprisingly good agreement for strong coupling of rotational and translational degrees of freedom -even for very strong dissipation in the translational degrees. Although the system is spatially homogeneous, the rotational velocity distribution is essentially Maxwellian. Surprisingly, the distribution of tangential velocities is strongly deviating from a Maxwellian. An interpretation of these results is proposed, as well as a setup for an experiment.

PACS
45.70.-n - Granular systems.
51.10.+y - Kinetic and transport theory of gases.
47.11.+j - Computational methods in fluid dynamics.

© EDP Sciences 2002