Granular transport in a horizontally vibrated sawtooth channel

Abstract

We present a new mode of transport of spherical particles in a horizontally vibrated channel with sawtooth shaped side walls. The underlying driving mechanism is based on an interplay of directional energy injection transformed by the sidewall collisions and density dependent interparticle collisions. Experiments and matching numerics show that the average particle velocity reaches a maximum at 60% of the maximal filling density. Introducing a spatial phase shift between the channel boundaries increases the transport velocity by an order of magnitude.