STEADY-STATES OF A COLUMN OF SHAKEN INELASTIC BEADS

We study dynamical properties of N inelastic beads shaken by a vibrating plane. These systems exhibit three kinds of steady states, depending on the inelasticity of the beads: a gas, a partially condensed phase, and a collapsed phase. In the one-dimensional case, we show that these phases are characterized by the parameter =N(1-), where is the restitution coefficient measuring the energy dissipation during the collisions. For <0.1 and 1.5<<3.1, good agreement is found between the one-body distribution function obtained by numerical simulations and analytical solutions. © 1994 The American Physical Society.