Convection in a fully immersed granular slurry - art. no. 061302

Using vertical vibrations, we have induced convection in a granular system completely immersed in fluid inside a cylindrical container. Convection is established in a single convection roll, which carries the material upward in the center and downward along the side walls of the container. We measur e the rise times of tracer particles embedded in the medium at various dept hs along the central axis of the system. By fitting this data to an appropr iate functional form, we obtain information on the depth dependence of conv ection velocity. Significant differences are found in the frequency and acc eleration amplitude dependence of convection between wet and otherwise iden tical dry systems. In addition, we find that a power-law form provides a be tter fit to our data than the logarithmic form used in dry systems.