Granular flows over normally vibrated inclined bases

P Sonar and A Bhateja and I Sharma, PHYSICAL REVIEW FLUIDS, 9, 124304 (2024).

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevFluids.9.124304

We investigate granular flows over an inclined rigid base, which is vibrated externally in a direction normal to itself, through the discrete element method. We vary the base's inclination angle theta , vibration frequency f , and amplitude A to study changes in the granular flow's profile and the mass flow rate Q . We find that the flow velocity profiles for the vibrated bases are nonlinear, unlike their fixed-base counterparts. Our study reveals that Q may be maintained nearly constant in flows over vibrated bases utilizing appropriate combinations of theta , A , and f . At the same time, by vibrating the base depending on the inclination angle, we may increase the mass flow rate by 25 to 100 times, compared to the values for the fixed base. Finally, we characterize Q in terms of a nondimensional number S , which is the ratio of vibrational and gravitational energies.

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