49 research outputs found
Continuum simulation of the discharge of the granular silo: a validation test for the mu(I)-visco-plastic flow law
Using both a continuum Navier-Stokes solver, with the mu(I)-flow-law
implemented to model the viscous behavior, and the discrete Contact Dynamics
algorithm, the discharge of granular silos is simulated in two dimensions from
the early stages of the discharge until complete release of the material. In
both cases, the Beverloo scaling is recovered. We first do not attempt
quantitative comparison, but focus on the qualitative behavior of velocity and
pressure at different locations in the flow. A good agreement is obtained in
the regions of rapid flows, while areas of slow creep are not entirely captured
by the continuum model. The pressure field shows a general good agreement. The
evolution of the free surface implies differences, however, the bulk
deformation is essentially identical in both approaches. The influence of the
parameters of the mu(I)-flow-law is systematically investigated, showing the
importance of the dependence on the inertial number I to achieve quantitative
agreement between continuum and discrete discharge. The general ability of the
continuum model to reproduce qualitatively the granular behavior is found to be
very encouraging.Comment: 12 pages, 15 figure
The granular silo as a continuum plastic flow: the hour-glass vs the clepsydra
The granular silo is one of the many interesting illustrations of the
thixotropic property of granular matter: a rapid flow develops at the outlet,
propagating upwards through a dense shear flow while material at the bottom
corners of the container remains static. For large enough outlets, the
discharge flow is continuous; however, by contrast with the clepsydra for which
the flow velocity depends on the height of fluid left in the container, the
discharge rate of granular silos is constant. Implementing a plastic rheology
in a 2D Navier-Stokes solver (following the mu(I)-rheology or a constant
friction), we simulate the continuum counterpart of the granular silo. Doing
so, we obtain a constant flow rate during the discharge and recover the
Beverloo scaling independently of the initial filling height of the silo. We
show that lowering the value of the coefficient of friction leads to a
transition toward a different behavior, similar to that of a viscous fluid, and
where the filling height becomes active in the discharge process. The pressure
field shows that large enough values of the coefficient of friction (
0.3) allow for a low-pressure cavity to form above the outlet, and can thus
explain the Beverloo scaling. In conclusion, the difference between the
discharge of a hourglass and a clepsydra seems to reside in the existence or
not of a plastic yield stress.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure
Gas-assisted discharge flow of granular media from silos
International audienceWe studied experimentally the discharge of a vertical silo filled by spherical glass beads and assisted by injection of air from the top at a constant flow rate, a situation which has practical interest for nuclear safety or air-assisted discharge of hoppers. The measured parameters are the mass flow rate and the pressure along the silo, while the controlled parameters are the size of particles and the flow rate of air. Increasing the air flow rate induces an increase in the granular media flow rate. Using a two-phase continuum model with a frictional rheology to describe particle-particle interactions, we reveal the role played by the air pressure gradient at the orifice. Based on this observation we propose a simple analytical model which predicts the mass flow rate of a granular media discharged from a silo with injection of gas. This model takes into account the coupling with the gas flow as well as the silo geometry, position and size of the orifice
The Cohesive Granular Collapse as a Continuum : Parametrization Study
Although intensive research on the flow of dry granular materials has allowed for the proposition of continuum rheology and modelling, the behaviour of flowing cohesive material has attracted less attention so far. To start modelling such cohesive flows, we first focus on the configuration of a granular collapse, which is a simple benchmark test. Specifically, we compare granular-collapse experiments of cohesive grains with numerical simulations, where we test a simple rheology for the material : the so-called µ(I)-rheology, supplmented by a yield stress for cohesion. This document reports the sensitivity of our numerical simulations on the parameters of the rheology, often challenging to measure in experiments
Stationary shear flows of dense granular materials : a tentative continuum modelling
We propose a simple continuum model to interpret the shearing motion of
dense, dry and cohesion-less granular media. Compressibility, dilatancy and
Coulomb-like friction are the three basic ingredients. The granular stress is
split into a rate-dependent part representing the rebound-less impacts between
grains and a rate-independent part associated with long-lived contacts. Because
we consider stationary flows only, the grain compaction and the grain velocity
are the two main variables. The predicted velocity and compaction profiles are
in apparent agreement with the experimental or numerical results concerning
free-surface shear flows as well as confined shear flow
Granular Pressure and the Thickness of a Layer Jamming on a Rough Incline
Dense granular media have a compaction between the random loose and random
close packings. For these dense media the concept of a granular pressure
depending on compaction is not unanimously accepted because they are often in a
"frozen" state which prevents them to explore all their possible microstates, a
necessary condition for defining a pressure and a compressibility
unambiguously. While periodic tapping or cyclic fluidization have already being
used for that exploration, we here suggest that a succession of flowing states
with velocities slowly decreasing down to zero can also be used for that
purpose. And we propose to deduce the pressure in \emph{dense and flowing}
granular media from experiments measuring the thickness of the granular layer
that remains on a rough incline just after the flow has stopped.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure
The influence of localised size reorganisation on short-duration bidispersed granular flows
We investigate experimentally the runout resulting from the collapse of a granular column containing two particle species that differ in size only. The experimental configuration is strictly twodimensional (only one particle per width of the experimental tank) and we explore both the role of the initial arrangement and proportion of the two particle sizes in the column, using high-speed videography, and by determining the centres of mass of the big and small particles in the initial column and the final deposit. The duration of the experiment is sufficiently short that large-scale segregation does not occur, however, we find a clear dependence of runout on both initial mixture arrangement and proportion for all conditions. We investigated this observation through detailed analysis of the flow front motion, and identify a characteristic "stopping" phase when dissipation dominates, and we apply a shallow layer model at the flow front to show how the initial mixture arrangement and proportion influence the effective coefficient of friction during emplacement. We find that a bidispersed mixture can induce a larger friction on emplacement than a monodispersed mixture, and the highest coefficient of friction was found for a well-mixed initial arrangement of particles at the proportion that shows maximum horizontal spreading of the flow. These observations suggest that downwards percolation of fine particles takes place at the front of the collapsing column, and so localised size segregation processes at the flow front can control flow mobility. This effect is likely to be important in controlling the mobility of large geophysical flows that occur on finite time scales, and whose deposits typically show granular segregation at the front and edges but not throughout the entire deposit