Orientational and Translational Cooling in Two Dimensional Systems of Granular Needles

Abstract

We present molecular dynamics results of a two-dimensional gas of inelastic needles. At high number densities such a system forms a macroscopically ordered nematic phase. A simple dissipation model is introduced which takes into account geometry and number density of interacting bodies. Freely cooling of the dissipative system leads to  orientational clusters (bundles), local inelastic collapse and decrease of the order parameter.