Experimental study of granular compaction dynamics at different scales: Grain mobility, hexagonal domains, and packing fraction

We present an original experimental study of the compaction dynamics for two-dimensional granular systems. Compaction dynamics is measured at three different scales: the macroscopic scale through the normalized packing fraction rho, the mesoscopic scale through the normalized fraction phi of hexagonal domains in the system, and the microscopic scale through the grain mobility mu. Moreover, the hexagonal domains are found to obey a growth process dominated by the displacement of domain boundaries. A global picture of compaction dynamics relevant at each scale is proposed.