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Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 068003 (2007) [4 pages]

Washboard Road: The Dynamics of Granular Ripples Formed by Rolling Wheels

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Nicolas Taberlet1,2,*, Stephen W. Morris3, and Jim N. McElwaine1
1DAMTP, University of Cambridge, Wilberforce Road, CB3 0WA Cambridge, United Kingdom
2Laboratoire de Physique, ENS Lyon, 46 allée d’Italie, 69 007 Lyon, France
3Department of Physics, University of Toronto, 60 St. George Street, Toronto, Canada, M5S 1A7

Received 2 February 2007; revised 4 May 2007; published 10 August 2007

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.

© 2007 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.068003
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.068003
PACS:
45.70.−n

*Nicolas.taberlet@ens-lyon.fr

 
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