A predictive, size-dependent continuum model for dense granular flows

By D. Henann, Ken Kamrin. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013

313 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Dense granular materials display a complicated set of flow properties, which differentiate them from ordinary fluids. Despite their ubiquity, no model has been developed that captures or predicts the complexities of granular flow, posing an obstacle in industrial and geophysical applications. Here we propose a 3D constitutive model for well-developed, dense granular flows aimed at filling this need. The key ingredient of the theory is a grain-size-dependent nonlocal rheology—inspired by efforts for emulsions—in which flow at a point is affected by the local stress as well as the flow in neighboring material. The microscopic physical basis for this approach borrows from recent principles in soft glassy rheology. The size-dependence is captured using a single material parameter, and the resulting model is able to quantitatively describe dense granular flows in an array of different geometries. Of particular importance, it passes the stringent test of capturing all aspects of the highly nontrivial flows observed in split-bottom cells—a geometry that has resisted modeling efforts for nearly a decade. A key benefit of the model is its simple-to-implement and highly predictive final form, as needed for many real-world applications.

Subfields: Computational Mechanics, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d4184a95abd699fddf07d56161c295a47a8cf612

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In Computational Mechanics

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J. Gray

Citations in the corpus

The Physics of Sediment Transport Initiation, Cessation, and Entrainment Across Aeolian and Fluvial Environments (2020, background): “The most successful theories [Kamrin and Koval, 2012; Henann and Kamrin, 2013; Kamrin and Henann, 2015; Bouzid et al., 2013, 2015] suggest that the cooperative length scale ξ diverges at the yield stress (i.e., ξ ∝ |µ − µs |−ν , where ν ≈ 0.5).”
Beneath Our Feet: Strategies for Locomotion in Granular Media (2015, background): “However, recent developments have led to the derivation of a nonlocal rheology model in which flow at a point is affected by both the local stress and the flow in neighboring material (Henann & Kamrin 2013).”
Particle Segregation in Dense Granular Flows (2018, background): “…level, the recent advances in our understanding of the rheology of granular materials (GDR MiDi 2004; Jop et al. 2006; Kamrin & Koval 2012; Henann & Kamrin 2013; Barker et al. 2015, 2017; Barker & Gray 2017; Heyman et al. 2017) make possible fully coupled time-dependent simulations of the…”