Effect of bag tightness on the flight of a bouncing bag of grains

Abstract

We investigate the behavior of a bag of grains on top of an oscillating container. A bag of grains was subjected to vibration from a stereo speaker. The range of the intensity of vibration, in terms of dimensionless acceleration, <Γ>, is from 1 to 5. The graph of time-of-flight versus <Γ>, known as the bifurcation diagram, was plotted for various tightness of the bag. The bifurcation diagram generally shifted to the right as the tightness is decreased. In other words, the tighter is the bag, the longer is its time-of- flight. These results could be relevant to models of granular phenomena using the analogy between granular material and inelastic balls.