Depletion force in a bidisperse granular layer
Paul Melby1, Alexis Prevost, David A Egolf
1Department of Physics, Georgetown University, 37th & O Streets, Washington, DC 20057, USA.
Abstract:
We demonstrate the effect of the depletion force in experiments and simulations of vertically vibrated mixtures of large and small steel spheres. The system exhibits size segregation and a large increase in the pair correlation function of the large spheres for short distances that can be accurately described using a combination of the depletion potential derived for equilibrium colloidal systems and a Boltzmann factor. The Boltzmann factor defines an effective temperature for the system, which we compare to other measures of temperature.
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