  In this paper we show how, under certain restrictions, the hydrodynamic
equations for the freely evolving granular fluid fit within the framework of
the time dependent Landau-Ginzburg (LG) models for critical and unstable fluids
(e.g. spinodal decomposition). The granular fluid, which is usually modeled as
a fluid of inelastic hard spheres (IHS), exhibits two instabilities: the
spontaneous formation of vortices and of high density clusters. We suppress the
clustering instability by imposing constraints on the system sizes, in order to
illustrate how LG-equations can be derived for the order parameter, being the
rate of deformation or shear rate tensor, which controls the formation of
vortex patterns. From the shape of the energy functional we obtain the
stationary patterns in the flow field. Quantitative predictions of this theory
for the stationary states agree well with molecular dynamics simulations of a
fluid of inelastic hard disks.
