Homogeneous Cooling Granular Gases of Cohesive Particles

We consider the case of a homogeneously cooling gas of dissipative granular particles with the addition of short-range attractive potentials. An analytic solution is found using the pseudo-Liouville formalism in terms of a nondimensional ratio of interparticle potential energy to internal energy of the system. The solution reveals that the granular temperature evolution is indistinguishable from Haff's law until a critical temperature region is approached. In this critical region, an abrupt increase in cooling and aggregation are predicted. Lastly, the solution is compared against soft-sphere DEM data. The abrupt increase in cooling sheds light on the expected rheological behavior and jamming transitions in flows of such particles.