2007/03/09 by Leonardo E. Silbert, Gary S. Grest, Robert C. Brewster +2 · 1 citation
Engineering · Environmental Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Granular flow and fluidized beds #Landslides and related hazards #Particle Dynamics in Fluid Flows #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #cond-mat.soft
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.99.068002
4 pages
arxiv created 2007/03/09 · openalex publication_date 2007/08/09 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the rheology and distribution of interparticle contact lifetimes for gravity-driven, dense granular flows of noncohesive particles down an inclined plane using large-scale, three dimensional, granular dynamics simulations. Rather than observing a large number of long-lived contacts as might be expected for dense flows, brief binary collisions predominate. In the hard-particle limit, the rheology conforms to Bagnold scaling, where the shear stress is quadratic in the strain rate. As the particles are made softer, however, we find significant deviations from Bagnold rheology; the material flows more like a viscous fluid. We attribute this change in the collective rheology of the material to subtle changes in the contact lifetime distribution involving the increasing lifetime and number of the long-lived contacts in the softer particle systems.