We report simulations of a two-dimensional, dense, bidisperse system of inelastic hard disks falling down a vertical tube under the influence of gravity. We examine the approach to jamming as the average flow of particles down the tube is slowed by making the outlet narrower. Defining coarse-grained velocity and stress fields, we study two-point temporal and spatial correlation functions of these fields in a region of the tube where the time-averaged velocity is spatially uniform. We find that fluctuations in both velocity and stress become increasingly correlated as the system approaches jamming. We extract a growing length scale and time scale from these correlations.
Granular solid hydrodynamics, constructed to describe quasi-elastic and plastic motion of granular solid, is shown also capable of accounting for the rheology of granular dense flow. This makes it a unified, though still qualitative, hydrodynamic description, enabling one to tackle fluidization and jamming, the hysteretic transition between elasto-plastic motion and uniform dense flow.
Recent progresses in understanding the behavior of dense granular flows are presented. After presenting a bulk rheology of granular materials, I focus on the new developments to account for non-local effects, and on ongoing research concerning the surface rheology and the evolution of mechanical properties for heterogeneous systems.
Granular segregation is ubiquitous in industrial, geological or daily-life context, but there is still no unifying theoretical approach. In this review, we examine two examples of granular segregation -- shallow rapid flows and rotating drums -- which suggest that the dynamics of systems at intermediate and high density might be amenable to a statistical mechanics approach.
The question when and how dense granular materials start to flow under stress, despite many industrial and geophysical applications, remains largely unresolved. We develop and test a simple equation for the onset of quasi-static flows of granular materials which is based on the frictional aging of the granular packing. The result is a non-monotonic stress-strain relation which - akin to classical friction - is independent of the shear rate. This relation suffices to understand the below-threshold deformations of aging granular media, and its solid-to-liquid transition. Our results also elucida…
{\sc gsh} is a continuum mechanical theory constructed to qualitatively account for a broad range of granular phenomena. To probe and demonstrate its width, simple solutions of {\sc gsh} are related to granular phenomena and constitutive models, including (i) for vanishing shear rates: static stress distribution and propagation of elastic waves; (ii) at slow rates: critical state, shear band, the models of hypoplasticity and barodesy; (iii) at higher rates: the MIDI-model, rapid dense flow in the Bagnold regime. A unified, densely correlated understanding of granular physics emerges as a resul…
This work proposes a model for granular deformation that predicts the stress and velocity profiles in well-developed dense granular flows. Recent models for granular elasticity (Jiang and Liu 2003) and rate-sensitive plastic flow (Jop et al. 2006) are reformulated and combined into one universal granular continuum law, capable of predicting flowing regions and stagnant zones simultaneously in any arbitrary 3D flow geometry. The unification is performed by justifying and implementing a Kroner-Lee elasto-plastic decomposition, with care taken to ensure certain continuum physical principles are n…
Investigation of dynamics in dense granular media is challenging. Here we present a setup that facilitates gas fluidization of dense granular media in microgravity. The dynamics is characterized using diffusing wave spectroscopy. We demonstrate that agitated granular media reach a steady state within fractions of a second in drop tower flights. The intensity autocorrelation functions obtained in microgravity show a remarkable dependence on sample volume fraction and driving strength. A plateau in correlation merges at low volume fractions and strong driving, while correlation decays only very …
We present a first-principles theory for plug-free dense granular flow. This is done by coarse-graining directly the microscopic dynamics and deriving an explicit relation between the macroscopic stress and strain rate tensors. The newly derived relation not only differs significantly from that of the existing empirical models for such flows but it also provides a novel understanding of the effect of rigid-like rotational regions in the flow.
Dense granular flows are well described by several continuum models, however, their internal dynamics remain elusive. This study explores the contact force distributions in simulated steady and homogenous shear flows. Results demonstrate the existence of high magnitude contact forces in faster flows with stiffer grains. A proposed physical mechanism explains this rate-dependent force transmission. This analysis establishes a relation between contact forces and grain velocities, providing an entry point to unify a range of continuum models derived from either contact forces or grain velocity.
Boundary shape, particularly roughness, strongly controls the amount of wall slip in dense granular flows. In this paper, we aim to quantify and understand which aspects of a dense granular flow are controlled by the boundary condition, and to incorporate these observations into a cooperative nonlocal model characterizing slow granular flows. To examine the influence of boundary properties, we perform experiments on a quasi-2D annular shear cell with a rotating inner wall and a fixed outer wall; the later is selected from among 6 walls with various roughness, local concavity, and compliance. W…
If a granular material is poured from above on a horizontal surface between two parallel, vertical plates, a sand heap grows in time. For small piles, the grains flow smoothly downhill, but after a critical pile size $X_c$, the flow becomes intermittent: sudden avalanches slide downhill from the apex to the base, followed by an "uphill front" that slowly climbs up, until a new downhill avalanche interrupts the process. By means of experiments controlling the distance between the apex of the sandpile and the container feeding it from above, we show that $X_c$ grows linearly with the input flux,…
We investigate the mechanical properties of a static dense granular assembly in response to a local forcing. To this end, a small cyclic displacement is applied on a grain in the bulk of a 2D disordered packing under gravity and the displacement fields are monitored. We evidence a dominant long range radial response in the upper half part above the sollicitation and after a large number of cycles the response is `quasi-reversible' with a remanent dissipation field exhibiting long range streams and vortex-like symmetry.
We consider dense rapid shear flow of inelastically colliding hard disks. Navier-Stokes granular hydrodynamics is applied accounting for the recent finding \cite{Luding,Khain} that shear viscosity diverges at a lower density than the rest of constitutive relations. New interpolation formulas for constitutive relations between dilute and dense cases are proposed and justified in molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. A linear stability analysis of the uniform shear flow is performed and the full phase diagram is presented. It is shown that when the inelasticity of particle collision becomes large…
This paper establishes a link between the non-local behaviour of granular materials and the presence of transient clusters of jammed particles within the flow. These clusters are first evidenced in simulated dense granular flows subjected to plane shear, and are found to originate from a mechanism of multiple orthogonal shear banding. A continuum non-local model, similar in form to the non-local Cooperative model, is then derived by considering the spatial redistribution of vorticity induced by these clusters. The non-locality length scale is thus expressed in terms of the cluster size. The pu…
We investigate experimentally the connection between short time dynamics and long time dynamical heterogeneities within a dense granular media under cyclic shear. We show that dynamical heterogeneities result from a two timescales process. Short time but already collective events consisting in clustered cage jumps concentrate most of the non affine displacements. On larger timescales such clusters appear aggregated both temporally and spatially in avalanches which eventually build the large scales dynamical heterogeneities. Our results indicate that facilitation plays an important role in the …
The manner in which signals propagate through dense granular systems in both space and time is not well understood. In order to learn more about this process, we carry out discrete element simulations of the system response to excitations where we control the driving frequency and wavelength independently. Fourier analysis shows that properties of the signal depend strongly on the spatial and temporal scales introduced by the perturbation. The features of the response provide a test-bed for any continuum theory attempting to predict signal properties. We illustrate this connection between micr…
We present a theoretical derivation of a rheology for dense granular flow, based on the process of inelastic collapse of neighboring particles. This collapse creates regions of correlated motion, which control the viscous behavior of the flow on a large scale. The result is a rheology that obeys the scaling form observed experimentally by Pouliquen and by the "G.D.R. Midi" group author. We identify the nature of the constraints imposed by inelastic collapse on the grain-scale motions in the flow; finally, we show using an energy cascade argument that the inelastic collapse need not proceed to …
Supercooled liquids and dense colloids exhibit anomalous behaviour known as "spatially heterogeneous dynamics" (SHD), which becomes increasingly pronounced with approach to the glass transition. Recently, SHD has been observed in confined granular packings under slow shear near the onset of jamming, bolstering speculation that the two transitions are related. Here, we report measurements of SHD in a system of air-driven granular beads, as a function of both density and effective temperature. On approach to jamming, the dynamics become progressively slower and more spatially heterogeneous. The …
After extensive quasi-static shearing, dense dry granular flows attain a steady-state condition of porosity and deviatoric stress, even as particles are continually rearranged. The paper considers two-dimensional flow and derives the probability distributions of two topological measures of particle arrangement---coordination number and void valence---that maximize topological entropy. By only considering topological dispersion, the method closely predicts the distribution of void valences, as measured in discrete element (DEM) simulations. Distributions of coordination number are also derived …
We derive an effective boundary condition for granular flow taking into account the effect of the heterogeneity of the force network on sliding friction dynamics. This yields an intermediate boundary condition which lies in the limit between no-slip and Coulomb friction; two simple functions relating wall stress, velocity, and velocity variance are found from numerical simulations. Moreover, we show that this effective boundary condition corresponds to Navier slip condition when GDR MiDi's model is assumed to be valid, and that the slip length depends on the length scale that characterises the…
The particle-scale dynamics of granular materials have commonly been characterized by the self-diffusion coefficient $D$. However, this measure discards the collective and topological information known to be an important characteristic of particle trajectories in dense systems. Direct measurement of the entanglement of particle space-time trajectories can be obtained via the topological braid entropy $\Sbraid$, which has previously been used to quantify mixing efficiency in fluid systems. Here, we investigate the utility of $\Sbraid$ in characterizing the dynamics of a dense, driven granular m…
This Letter introduces unexpected diffusion properties in dense granular flows, and shows that they result from the development of partially jammed clusters of grains, or granular vortices. Transverse diffusion coefficients $D$ and average vortex sizes $\ell$ are systematically measured in simulated plane shear flows at differing internal numbers $I$ revealing (i) a strong deviation from the expected scaling $D\propto d^2 \dot γ$ involving the grain size $d$ and shear rate $\dot γ$ and (ii) an increase in average vortex size $\ell$ at low $I$, following $\ell\propto dI^{-\frac{1}{2}}$ but limi…
Continuum modeling of size-segregation and flow in dense, bidisperse granular media: Accounting for segregation driven by both pressure gradients and shear-strain-rate gradients
We show that the velocity correlations in uniform dense granular flows inside a silo are similar to the hydrodynamic response of an elastic hard-sphere liquid. The measurements are made using a fluorescent refractive index matched interstitial fluid in a regime where the flow is dominated by grains in enduring contact and fluctuations scale with the distance traveled, independent of flow rate. The velocity autocorrelation function of the grains in the bulk shows a negative correlation at short time and slow oscillatory decay to zero similar to simple liquids. Weak spatial velocity correlations…
A continuum description of granular flows would be of considerable help in predicting natural geophysical hazards or in designing industrial processes. However, the constitutive equations for dry granular flows, which govern how the material moves under shear, are still a matter of debate. One difficulty is that grains can behave like a solid (in a sand pile), a liquid (when poured from a silo) or a gas (when strongly agitated). For the two extreme regimes, constitutive equations have been proposed based on kinetic theory for collisional rapid flows, and soil mechanics for slow plastic flows. …
Recently, a new nonlocal granular rheology was successfully used to predict steady granular flows, including grain-size-dependent shear features, in a wide variety of flow configurations, including all variations of the split-bottom cell. A related problem in granular flow is that of mechanically-induced creep, in which shear deformation in one region of a granular medium fluidizes its entirety, including regions far from the sheared zone, effectively erasing the yield condition everywhere. This enables creep deformation when a force is applied in the nominally quiescent region through an intr…
Unlike dry granular materials, a dense granular suspension like cornstarch in water can strongly resist extensional flows. At low extension rates, such a suspension behaves like a viscous liquid, but rapid extension results in a response where stresses far exceed the predictions of lubrication hydrodynamics and capillarity. To understand this remarkable mechanical response, we experimentally measure the normal force imparted by a large bulk of the suspension on a plate moving vertically upward at a controlled velocity. We observe that above a velocity threshold, the peak force increases by ord…
We report on the scaling between the lift force and the velocity lag experienced by a single particle of different size in a monodisperse dense granular chute flow. The similarity of this scaling to the Saffman lift force in (micro) fluids, suggests an inertial origin for the lift force responsible for segregation of (isolated, large) intruders in dense granular flows. We also observe an anisotropic pressure/stress field surrounding the particle, which potentially lies at the origin of the velocity lag. These findings are relevant for modelling and theoretical predictions of particle-size segr…
Using simulations and a virtual-spring-based approach, we measure the segregation force, Fseg, over a range of size-bidisperse mixture concentrations, particle size ratios, and shear rates to develop a model for Fseg that extends its applicability from the well-studied non-interacting intruders regime to finite-concentration mixtures where cooperative phenomena occur. The model predicts the concentration below which the single intruder assumption applies and provides an accurate description of the pressure partitioning between species.
We derive the macroscopic stress tensor for plug-free dense granular flow, using a first-principles coarse-graining of the inter-granular forces. The derivation is based on the assumption, which defines the da Vinci Fluid model, that the inter-granular interactions are dominated by normal contact forces and solid friction. An explicit form for the stress -- strain rate relation is obtained, providing closure for the flow equations of dense granular fluids and improves on existing models, which are also based on solid friction as the dominant drag mechanism.
The behaviour of dense assemblies of dry grains submitted to continuous shear deformation has been the subject of many experiments and discrete particle simulations. This paper is a collective work carried out among the French research group GDR Milieux Divisés. It proceeds from the collection of results on steady uniform granular flows obtained by different groups in six different geometries both in experiments and numerical works. The goal is to achieve a coherent presentation of the relevant quantities to be measured i.e. flowing thresholds, kinematic profiles, effective friction, etc. Firs…
Observing and understanding the movement of an intruder through opaque dense suspensions such as quicksand remains a practical and conceptual challenge. Here we use an ultrasonic probe to investigate the dynamics of a steel ball sinking in a 3D dense glass bead packing saturated by water. We show that the frictional model developed for dry granular media can be used to describe the ball motion induced by horizontal vibration. From this rheology we infer the static friction coefficient and effective viscosity that decrease when increasing the vibration intensity. Our main finding is that the vi…
The dynamical mechanism at the origin of the non-local rheology of dense granular flows is investigated trough discrete element simulations. We show that the influence of a shear band on the mechanical behavior of a distant zone is contained in the spatial variations observed in the network of granular contacts. Using a micro-rheology technique, we establish that the exponential responses hence obtained, do not proof the validity of a mechanical activation process as previously suggested, but stem from the spatial relaxation of the shear rate as a direct consequence of a macroscopic non-local …
A scalar constitutive law was recently obtained for dense granular flows from a two-grain argument, both in the inertial regime (grain inertia) and in the viscous regime. As the resulting law is not exactly the same in both regimes, we here provide an expression for the crossover between both regimes.
We present in this Letter experimental results on the bidimensional flow field around a cylinder penetrating into dense granular matter together with drag force measurements. A hydrodynamic model based on extended kinetic theory for dense granular flow reproduces well the flow localization close to the cylinder and the corresponding scalings of the drag force, which is found to not depend on velocity, but linearly on the pressure and on the cylinder diameter and weakly on the grain size. Such a regime is found to be valid at a low enough "granular" Reynolds number.
Dense suspensions are widespread in nature, manufacturing and process engineering. Particle-based simulations have proven to be an invaluable complement to experimental rheological characterisation, serving as a virtual rheometer that enables rapid exploration of parameter space and detailed scrutiny of microscopic dynamics. To maximise the utility of such simulations, it can be advantageous to exploit pre-existing, well-optimised, well-documented codes. Here we provide a simple description of how to use LAMMPS to study the rheology of dense, granular suspensions.
Discrete element method is conducted to investigate the bidisperse dense granular flow having big and small grains in a two dimensional hopper. A half-circular dynamical force arch is observed above the outlet and Beverloo's law is verified to describe the relationship between flow rate and outlet size. The bidisperse flow can reach the maximum flow rate when a small fraction of big grains is added into the monodisperse flow with only small grains. The distributions of contact force, packing fraction and grain velocity indicate that the flow properties in the hopper are closely related to the …
The aim of this article is to discuss the concepts of non-local rheology and fluidity, recently introduced to describe dense granular flows. We review and compare various approaches based on different constitutive relations and choices for the fluidity parameter, focusing on the kinetic elasto-plastic model introduced by Bocquet et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett 103, 036001 (2009)] for soft matter, and adapted for granular matter by Kamrin et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 178301 (2012)], and the gradient expansion of the local rheology $μ(I)$ that we have proposed [Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 238301 (2013)]. We …
In this paper we report the results of simulations of a 2D gravity driven, dissipative granular flow through a hopper system. Measurements of impulse distributions P(I) on the simulated system show flow-velocity-invariant behavior of the distribution for impulses larger than the average impulse <I>. For small impulses, however, P(I) decreases significantly with flow velocity, a phenomenon which can be attributed exclusively to collisions between grains undergoing frequent collisions. Visualizations of the system also show that these frequently colliding particles tend to form increasingly larg…
Years ago Edwards proposed a thermodynamic description of dense granular matter, in which the grains (the `atoms' of the system) interact with inelastic forces. The approach is intriguing but is not justified from first principles, and hence, in the absence of conclusive tests of its validity, it has not been widely accepted. We perform a numerical experiment with a realistic granular matter model specially conceived to be reproducible in the laboratory. The results strongly support the thermodynamic picture.
We formulate and solve a model problem of dispersion of dense granular materials in rapid shear flow down an incline. The effective dispersivity of the depth-averaged concentration of the dispersing powder is shown to vary as the Péclet number squared, as in classical Taylor--Aris dispersion of molecular solutes. An extensions to generic shear profiles is presented, and possible applications to industrial and geological granular flows are noted.
A vertically shaken granular medium hosts a blade rotating around a fixed vertical axis, which acts as a mesorheological probe. At high densities, independently from the shaking intensity, the blade's dynamics show strong caging effects, marked by transient sub-diffusion and a maximum in the velocity power density spectrum (vpds), at a resonant frequency $\sim 10$ Hz. Interpreting the data through a diffusing harmonic cage model allows us to retrieve the elastic constant of the granular medium and its collective diffusion coefficient. For high frequencies $f$, a tail $\sim 1/f$ in the vpds rev…
We study the quasi-static penetration of a flexible beam in a two-dimensional dense granular medium lying on an horizontal plate. Rather than a buckling-like behavior we observe a transition between a regime of crack-like penetration in which the fiber only shows small fluctuations around a stable straight geometry and a bending regime in which the fiber fully bends and advances through series of loading/unloading steps. We show that the shape reconfiguration of the fiber is controlled by a single non dimensional parameter: L/Lc, the ratio of the length of the flexible beam L to Lc, a bending …
We study the transport properties of particles draining from a silo using imaging and direct particle tracking. The particle displacements show a universal transition from super-diffusion to normal diffusion, as a function of the distance fallen, independent of the flow speed. In the super-diffusive (but sub-ballistic) regime, which occurs before a particle falls through its diameter, the displacements have fat-tailed and anisotropic distributions. In the diffusive regime, we observe very slow cage breaking and Peclet numbers of order 100, contrary to the only previous microscopic model (based…
We study the rheology of dense granular flows for frictionless spherocylinders by means of 3D numerical simulations. As in the case of spherical particles, the effective friction $μ$ is an increasing function of the inertial number $I$, and we systematically investigate the dependence of $μ$ on the particle aspect ratio $Q$, as well as that of the normal stress differences, the volume fraction and the coordination number. We show in particular that the quasi-static friction coefficient is non-monotonic with $Q$: from the spherical case $Q=1$, it first sharply increases, reaches a maximum aroun…
The problem of the spreading of a granular mass released at the top of a rough inclined plane was investigated. We experimentally measure the evolution of the avalanche from the initiation up to the deposit using a Moiré image processing technique. The results are quantitatively compared with the prediction of an hydrodynamic model based on depth averaged equations. In the model, the interaction between the flowing layer and the rough bottom is described by a non trivial friction force whose expression is derived from measurements on steady uniform flows. We show that the spreading of the mass…
Granular media take on great importance in industry and geophysics, posing a severe challenge to materials science. Their response properties elude known soft rheological models, even when the yield-stress discontinuity is blurred by vibro-fluidization. Here we propose a broad rheological scenario where average stress sums up a frictional contribution, generalizing conventional $μ(I)$-rheology, and a kinetic collisional term dominating at fast fluidization. Our conjecture fairly describes a wide series of experiments in a vibrofluidized vane setup, whose phenomenology includes velocity weakeni…
We experimentally investigate the statistical behaviour of a model two-dimensional granular system undergoing stationary sedimentation. Buoyant cylindrical particles are rotated in liquid-filled drum, thus confined in a harmonic centripetal potential with tunable curvature, which competes with gravity to produce various stationary states: though heterogeneous, the packing fraction of the system can be tuned to be fully dispersed to fully crystallised as the rotation rate is increased. We show that this dynamical system is in mechanical equilibrium in the confining potential and exhibits a ther…
We numerically and theoretically study macroscopic properties of dense, sheared granular materials. In this process we first introduce an invariance in Newton's equations, explain how it leads to Bagnold's scaling, and discuss how it relates to the dynamics of granular temperature. Next we implement numerical simulations of granular materials in two different geometries-- simple shear and flow down an incline-- and show that measurements can be extrapolated from one geometry to the other. Then we observe non-affine rearrangements of clusters of grains in response to shear strain and show that …
We report numerical results for velocity correlations in dense, gravity-driven granular flow down an inclined plane. For the grains on the surface layer, our results are consistent with experimental measurements reported by Pouliquen. We show that the correlation structure within planes parallel to the surface persists in the bulk. The two-point velocity correlation function exhibits exponential decay for small to intermediate values of the separation between spheres. The correlation lengths identified by exponential fits to the data show nontrivial dependence on the averaging time $\dt$ used …
