Granular flow modelled by Brownian particles

TL;DR

This paper introduces a minimal theoretical model for granular flow through pipes, analyzing stability and collision dynamics to better understand phenomena like clogging and density waves observed in experiments.

Contribution

It presents a new simplified model for granular flow that incorporates different collision definitions and examines system stability, filling a gap in theoretical understanding.

Findings

Model exhibits similar qualitative behavior with different collision definitions

Analyzes stability of homogeneous granular flow against perturbations

Provides insights into clogging and density wave phenomena

Abstract

Granular flows through pipes show interesting phenomena, e.g. clogging and density waves, 1/f-noise. These things are fairly good studied by computer-experiments, but there is a lack in theoretical and analytical consideration. We introduce a simple "minimal" model describing such a flow of granular particles and examine the stability of an initially homogeneous system against perturbations. In order to define the collisions between the granular particles we use two different approaches. For both, the simple and the more advanced collision definition, the model shows the qualitative same behaviour.