Granular material is vibro-fluidized in N = 2 and N = 3 connected compartments, respectively. For sufficiently strong shaking the granular gas is equi-partitioned, but if the shaking intensity is lowered, the gas clusters in one compartment. The phase transition towards the clustered state is of 2nd order for N = 2 and of 1st order for N = 3. In particular, the latter is hysteretic . The experimental findings are accounted for within a dynamical model that has exactly the above properties.
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Weele et al. (2001) studied this question.
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