Increasing granular flow rate with obstructions

We describe a simple experiment involving spheres rolling down an inclined plane towards a bottleneck and through a gap. Results of the experiment indicate that flow rate can be increased by placing an obstruction at optimal positions near the bottleneck. We use the experiment to develop a computer simulation using the PhysX physics engine. Simulations confirm the experimental results and we state several considerations necessary to obtain a model that agrees well with experiment. We demonstrate that the model exhibits clogging, intermittent and continuous flow, and that it can be used as a tool for further investigations in granular flow.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

The critical-state yield stress (termination locus) of adhesive powders from a single numerical experiment

Dry granular materials in a split-bottom ring shear cell geometry show wide shear bands under slow, quasi-static, large deformation. This system is studied in the presence of contact adhesion, using the discrete element method (DEM). Several continuum fields like the density, the deformation gradient and the stress tensor are computed locally and are analyzed with the goal to formulate objective constitutive relations for the flow behavior of cohesive powders. From a single simulation only, by applying time- and (local) space-averaging, and focusing on the regions of the system that experienced considerable deformations, the critical-state yield stress (termination locus) can be obtained. It is close to linear, for non-cohesive granular materials, and nonlinear with peculiar pressure dependence, for adhesive powders—due to the nonlinear dependence of the contact adhesion on the confining forces. The contact model is simplified and possibly will need refinements and additional effects in order to resemble realistic powders. However, the promising method of how to obtain a critical-state yield stress from a single numerical test of one material is generally applicable and waits for calibration and validation

Calculation of the incremental stress-strain relation of a polygonal packing

The constitutive relation of the quasi-static deformation on two dimensional packed samples of polygons is calculated using molecular dynamic simulations. The stress values at which the system remains stable are bounded by a failure surface, that shows a power law dependence on the pressure. Below the failure surface, non linear elasticity and plastic deformation are obtained, which are evaluated in the framework of the incremental linear theory. The results shows that the stiffness tensor can be directly related to the micro-contact rearrangements. The plasticity obeys a non-associated flow rule, with a plastic limit surface that does not agree with the failure surface.Comment: 11 pages, 20 figur

How to get the yield locus of an adhesive powder from a single numerical experiment

Granular materials in a split-bottom ring shear cell geometry show wide shear bands under slow, quasi-static deformation. From discrete element simulations (DEM), several continuum fields like the deformation gradient and stress are computed and evaluated with the goal to formulate objective constitutive relations for the flow behavior. From a single simulation only, by applying time- and (local) space-averaging, yield loci can be obtained: linear for non-cohesive granular materials and non-linear with peculiar pressure dependence for adhesive powders. While the contact model will possibly need additional effects to be included in order to resemble realistic powders, the method how to obtain yield loci from a single numerical test on one material appears very promising and waits for calibration and validation

On the use of graphics processing units (GPUs) for molecular dynamics simulation of spherical particles

General-purpose computation on Graphics Processing Units (GPU) on personal computers has recently become an attractive alternative to parallel computing on clusters and supercomputers. We present the GPU-implementation of an accurate molecular dynamics algorithm for a system of spheres. The new hybrid CPU-GPU implementation takes into account all the degrees of freedom, including the quaternion representation of 3D rotations. For additional versatility, the contact interaction between particles is defined using a force law of enhanced generality, which accounts for the elastic and dissipative interactions, and the hard-sphere interaction parameters are translated to the soft-sphere parameter set. We prove that the algorithm complies with the statistical mechanical laws by examining the homogeneous cooling of a granular gas with rotation. The results are in excellent agreement with well established mean-field theories for low-density hard sphere systems. This GPU technique dramatically reduces user waiting time, compared with a traditional CPU implementation