Magnetically controlled ballistic deposition. A model of polydisperse granular packing

Abstract

The flow and deposition of polydisperse granular materials is simulated through the Magnetic Diffusion Limited Aggregation (MDLA) model. The random walk undergone by an entity in the MDLA model is modified such that the trajectories are ballistic in nature, leading to a magnetically controlled ballistic deposition (MBD) model. This allows to obtain important ingredients about a difficult problem that of the nonequilibrium segregation of polydisperse sandpiles and heterogeneous adsorption of a binary distribution of particles which can interact with each other and with an external field. Our detailed results from many simulations of MBD clusters on a two dimensional triangular lattice above a flat surface in a vertical finite size box for binary systems indicates intriguing variations of the density, ''magnetization'', types of clusters, and fractal dimensions. We derive the field and grain interaction dependent susceptibility and compressibility. We deduce a completely new phase diagram for binary granular piles and discuss its complexity inherent to different grain competition and cluster growth probabilities.