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Experimental determination of basal gas pressure and effective coefficient of friction for dry granular flow

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Abstract

Knowledge about the interaction between granular flow and fluid (gas) is essential for understanding dynamics. In this study, a series of experiments designed with different conditions were conducted using a flume configuration to investigate the dynamics of particle flow by directly measuring the basal gas pressure, normal force, and shear force. The results show that the basal gas pressure is a positive value, reaching and remaining at the bottom of the slider before the granular flow, which increases with inclination angle but has little support for the solid skeleton of the flow. (The ratio to normal pressure is ~ 2%.) After the flow depth decreases, the gas pressure shows a negative value, which may be the result of the slight expansion of the sliding body. Ultimately, an unstable negative pressure can be generated after the main body passes through. The dynamic characteristics of our experimental flow are strongly related to particle size, as shown by the inverse relationship between the effective basal friction coefficient and particle size, which we explain with force fluctuations. For granular flow with a high content of coarse particles, the fluctuations of the normal force and shear force (normalized standard deviation) and effective basal friction coefficient are all negatively correlated, which shows that a high-amplitude pulsating force promotes particle propagation, and shear force fluctuation plays an important role, which is approximately 2–3 times the normal force fluctuation. The generation of a high-amplitude pulsating force is attributed to high-frequency, dense particle collisions at the grain scale, which is mainly determined by the grain size and magnified as the angle increases.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development program of China (Project No.2022YFF0800604), the Major Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.41877266; No.42090051), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (2021373), and China Railway Design Corporation (Project No. 2020YY340408).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Geohazard Prevention and Geoenvironment Protection, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu, 610059, China

    Xiao Yu, Dongpo Wang & Yutao Luo

  2. Key Laboratory of Mountain Hazards and Surface Processes, Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu, 610041, China

    Xiao Yu & Siming He

  3. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Siming He

  4. China Railway Design Corporation, Tianjin, 300142, China

    Bo Shen

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  1. Xiao Yu
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Correspondence to Dongpo Wang or Siming He.

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Yu, X., Wang, D., He, S. et al. Experimental determination of basal gas pressure and effective coefficient of friction for dry granular flow. Acta Geotech. 18, 3889–3904 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11440-023-01817-4

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