Influence of confinement on granular penetration by impact

TL;DR

This study experimentally investigates how confinement within a finite vessel affects the penetration depth of spheres impacting granular media, revealing that lateral walls significantly reduce penetration while the bottom wall's influence is minimal.

Contribution

The paper provides quantitative analysis of confinement effects on granular impact penetration, highlighting the different ranges of influence of lateral and bottom walls.

Findings

Lateral walls reduce penetration depth significantly.

The influence of lateral walls extends approximately one sphere diameter.

Bottom wall effects are confined to a much shorter range.

Abstract

We study experimentally the influence of confinement on the penetration depth of impacting spheres into a granular medium contained in a finite cylindrical vessel. The presence of close lateral walls reduces the penetration depth, and the characteristic distance for these lateral wall effects is found to be of the order of one sphere diameter. The influence of the bottom wall is found to have a much shorter range.