Two dimensional curved disks on a sphere: the evolution of kinetic energy

Abstract

We put disks on a sphere between two parallels of this sphere. The disks have the curvature of the sphere and interact via a simplified Hertz law. We analyze the behavior of the total kinetic energy of the whole assembly of disks with Riemanian geometry and contrarily to flat spaces, this kinetic energy increases. This is due to a non radial component of the resulting velocity vector at each interaction between two disks. The study of granular matter in twodimensional curved spaces is therefore not trivial.