Particle Skull’s Alvaro Moreira posts a look into using the initial state settings in Houdini. When creating simulations, for fragmented objects, the initial state settings will allow you to have the fragments stay on the ground without moving or vibrating.
Alvaro notes that the trick is not how to get the fragments settled on the ground on the first frame of the animation. But rather how you can keep those fragments dynamically interacting with the new objects in your Houdini scene.