Buoyancy driven convection in vertically shaken granular matter: experiment, numerics, and theory

Buoyancy driven granular convection is studied for a shallow, vertically shaken granular bed in a quasi 2D container. Starting from the granular Leidenfrost state, in which a dense particle cluster floats on top of a dilute gaseous layer of fast particles (Meerson et al. in Phys RevLett 91:024301, 2003; Eshuis et al. in Phys Rev Lett 95:258001, 2005), we witness the emergence of counter-rotating convection rolls when the shaking strength is increased above a critical level. This resembles the classical onset of convection—at a critical value of the Rayleigh number—in a fluid heated from below. The same transition, even quantitatively, is seen in molecular dynamics simulations, and explained by a hydrodynamic-like model in which the granular material is treated as a continuum. The critical shaking strength for the onset of granular convection is accurately reproduced by a linear stability analysis of the model. The results from experiment, simulation, and theory are in good agreement. The present paper extends and completes our earlier analysis