Statistics of jamming in the discharge of a 2-D Silo

TL;DR

This study uses simulations to analyze jamming and avalanche behaviors in a 2-D silo, revealing exponential avalanche size distributions and a rapid increase in average avalanche size with exit opening, aligning more with 3-D experimental findings.

Contribution

It provides new simulation data on jamming in 2-D silos, showing a critical divergence in avalanche size growth similar to 3-D experiments.

Findings

Avalanche sizes follow exponential distributions.

Average avalanche size increases rapidly with exit opening.

Growth pattern aligns with critical divergence observed in 3-D experiments.

Abstract

Jamming and avalanche statistics are studied in a simulation of the discharge of a polydisperse ensemble of disks from a 2-D silo. Exponential distributions are found for the avalanche sizes for all sizes of the exit opening, in agreement with reported experiments. The average avalanche size grows quite fast with the size of the exit opening. Data for this growth agree better with a critical divergence with a large critical exponent, as reported for 3-D experiments, than with the exponential growth reported for 2-D experiments.