Fluidization of wet granular matter

TL;DR

This study investigates how small amounts of liquid affect the fluidization behavior of granular glass beads, revealing dependencies on bead size, sample height, and shaking frequency, which can be modeled simply.

Contribution

It introduces a simple model that explains the influence of liquid addition on the fluidization threshold of wet granular matter.

Findings

Critical acceleration increases with liquid addition

Dependencies on bead size, height, and frequency are factorized

Model accounts for most experimental observations

Abstract

We have studied the effect of small amounts of added liquid on the dynamic behavior of a granular system consisting of spherical glass beads. The critical acceleration $\Gamma$ for fluidization is found to increase strongly when liquid is added. It furthermore depends on the bead radius, the height of the sample, and the shaking frequency. As our main result, we find that these dependencies can be presented in a factorized form. We present a simple model which accounts for most of our findings.