Related papers: Continuous to intermittent flows in growing granul…
Sloped terrains tend to creep downward over time, even when their slope is below the nominal angle of repose. This behavior can result from periodic variations in environmental conditions, such as daily or seasonal fluctuations in…
Spontaneous stratification in granular mixtures has been recently reported by H. A. Makse et al. [Nature 386, 379 (1997)]. Here we study experimentally the dynamical processes leading to spontaneous stratification. Using a high-speed video…
Fluidisation is the process by which the weight of a bed of particles is supported by a gas flow passing through it from below. When fluidised materials flow down an incline, the dynamics of the motion differ from their non-fluidised…
The rheology of granular particles in an inclined plane geometry is studied using molecular dynamics simulations. The flow--no-flow boundary is determined for piles of varying heights over a range of inclination angles $\theta$. Three…
We have measured the flux of grains from a hole in the bottom of a shaken container of grains. We find that the peak velocity of the vibration, vmax, controls the flux, i.e., the flux is nearly independent of the frequency and acceleration…
Understanding how granular materials respond to shear stress remains a central challenge in soft matter physics. We report direct observations of persistent granular convection in the bulk shear zones of spherical particle packings -- a…
Sandpiles have become paradigmatic systems for granular flow studies in statistical physics. New directions of investigations are discussed here. Rather than varying the nature of the pile (sand, salt, rice,..) we have investigated changes…
Granular creep is the slow, sub-yield movement of constituents in a granular packing due to the disordered nature of its grain-scale interactions. Despite the ubiquity of creep in disordered materials, it is still not understood how to best…
Segregation and mixing of granular mixtures during heap formation have important consequences in industry and agriculture. This research investigates three different final particle configurations of bi-disperse granular mixtures --…
Experimental results are presented for a vertically shaken granular layer. In the range of accelerations explored, the layer develops a convective motion in the form of one or more rolls. The velocity of the grains near the wall has been…
A semi-continuum model is introduced to study the dynamics of the formation of granular heaplets in tapped granular layers. By taking into account the energy dissipation of collisions and screening effects due to avalanches, this model is…
We probe the dynamics of intermittent avalanches caused by steady addition of grains to a quasi-two dimensional heap. To characterize the time-dependent average avalanche flow speed v(t), we image the top free surface. To characterize the…
We experimentally study the dynamics of granular media in a discharging hopper. In such flows, there often appears to be a critical outlet size $D_c$ such that the flow never clogs for $D > D_c$. We report on the time-averaged velocity…
We study the segregation of granular mixtures in two-dimensional silos using a set of coupled equations for surface flows of grains. We study the thick flow regime, where the grains are segregated in the rolling phase. We incorporate this…
Anyone who has built a sandcastle recognizes that the addition of liquid to granular materials increases their stability. However, measurements of this increased stability often conflict with theory and with each other [1-7]. A…
Despite extensive studies on either smooth granular-fluid flow or the solid-like deformation at the slow limit, the change between these two extremes remains largely unexplored. By systematically investigating the fluctuations of tightly…
Surface flow of granular material is investigated within a continuum approach in two dimensions. The dynamics is described by a non-linear coupling between the two `states' of the granular material: a mobile layer and a static bed.…
We experimentally investigate how a long granular pile confined in a narrow channel destabilizes when it is inclined above the angle of repose. A uniform flow then develops, which is localized at the free surface. It first accelerates…
We numerically study the flow of dense granular materials between parallel plates driven by an external force. The granular materials form a jammed solid-like state when the external force is below a critical force, while they flow like…
Experiments on a thin layer of cohesive wet granular matter under vertical vibrations reveal kink separated domains that collide with the container at different phases. Due to the strong cohesion arising from the formation of liquid bridges…