Particle flow rate in silos under rotational shear

TL;DR

This study numerically investigates how rotational shear affects granular flow in silos, revealing that flow rate behavior depends on orifice size and is linked to changes in flow pattern, density, and kinetic stress distribution.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed numerical analysis of rotational shear effects on silo flow, connecting flow rate variations to flow pattern transitions and stress distributions.

Findings

Flow rate increases with shear for small orifices.

Flow rate exhibits non-monotonic behavior for large orifices.

Density changes, not velocity, drive non-monotonic flow rate behavior.

Abstract

Very recently, To et al.~have experimentally explored granular flow in a cylindrical silo, with a bottom wall that rotates horizontally with respect to the lateral wall \cite{Kiwing2019}. Here, we numerically reproduce their experimental findings, in particular, the peculiar behavior of the mass flow rate $Q$ as a function of the frequency of rotation $f$. Namely, we find that for small outlet diameters $D$ the flow rate increased with $f$, while for larger $D$ a non-monotonic behavior is confirmed. Furthermore, using a coarse-graining technique, we compute the macroscopic density, momentum, and the stress tensor fields. These results show conclusively that changes in the discharge process are directly related to changes in the flow pattern from funnel flow to mass flow. Moreover, by decomposing the mass flux (linear momentum field) at the orifice into two main factors: macroscopic velocity and density fields, we obtain that the non-monotonic behavior of the linear momentum is caused by density changes rather than by changes in the macroscopic velocity. In addition, by analyzing the spatial distribution of the kinetic stress, we find that for small orifices increasing rotational shear enhances the mean kinetic pressure $\langle p^k \rangle$ and the system dilatancy. This reduces the stability of the arches, and, consequently, the volumetric flow rate increases monotonically. For large orifices, however, we detected that $\langle p^k \rangle$ changes non-monotonically, which might explain the non-monotonic behavior of $Q$ when varying the rotational shear.