Tetris Model for Granular Drag

Abstract

Motivated by recent experiments on objects moved vertically through a bed a glass beads, a simple model to study granular drag is proposed. The model consists of dimers on a slanted two-dimensional lattice through which objects are dragged very slowly to obtain full relaxation between moves. Such an approach avoids complications due to static friction in more realistic off-lattice models, and provides for fast simulations at large system sizes. The upward motion of objects of various diameters embedded in the lattice is simulated and close resemblance with the experiments is found.