English

Clogging-flowing transition of granular media in a two-dimensional vertical pipe

Soft Condensed Matter 2026-02-09 v2

Abstract

We experimentally and numerically investigate the clogging behavior of granular materials in a two-dimensional vertical pipe. The nonmonotonicity of clogging probability found in a cylindrical vertical pipe [L\'opez et al., Phys. Rev. E 102, 010902 (2020)] is also observed in the two-dimensional case. We numerically demonstrate that the clogging probability strongly correlates with the friction coefficient μ\mu in addition to the pipe-to-particle diameter ratio D/dD/d. We thus construct a clogging-flowing D/dD/d-μ\mu phase diagram within the 2<D/d<32<D/d<3 range. Finally, by analyzing the geometrical arrangements of particles and using a simple analysis of forces and torques, we are able to predict the clogging-flowing transition in the D/dD/d-μ\mu phase diagram and explain the mechanism of the observed counterintuitive nonmonotonicity in more detail. We demonstrate that for pipe clogging, friction-mediated force and torque equilibrium are essential for arch formation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2505.16469,
  title  = {Clogging-flowing transition of granular media in a two-dimensional vertical pipe},
  author = {Y. Zhou and M. Li and Y. Guan and Y. Wang and Y. Liu and Z. Zou},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.16469},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

10 pages, 11 figures