Granular Materials

marbles

The swirling (circular translation of the center of mass) of a dish filled with beads exhibits a curious phenomena: when the density of beads is high enough, the body of beads rotate in the direction opposite to that of the applied swirling. The goal of this project is to understand why and when this happens. By tracking individual beads and extracting their rolling, slipping, and packing information, we aim to understand the dynamics of the behavior of the beads.