Numerical Simulations of Collisions in Systems of Non-Identical Particles

The numerical simulations of 200 mutually colliding, non-identical particles indicate that if elasticity depends on the impact velocity, an equipartition of the random kinetic energy is possible if either the particle masses are close to each other, or the number of small particles significantly exceeds that of large particles. On the other hand, if the large particles dominate, the velocities of the smaller particles are at most a few times greater than those of the large ones. In the case of a constant coefficient of restitution no equipartition is observed.