Granular Solid-liquid Transition: Experiment and Simulation

Abstract:

Granular media are amorphous materials, which differs from traditional solid or liquid. In different circumstance, granular behavior varies from solid-like to liquid-like, and the transitions between these regimes are always related to many complex natural progresses such as the failure of soil foundation and the occurrence of landslide and debris flow. The mechanic of elastic instability during the transition from solid-like to liquid-like regime, and the quantitative description of irreversible deformation during flow are the key problems to interpret these transition phenomena. In this work, we developed a continuum model with elastic stable condition and irreversible flow rule of granular material based on a thermal dynamical model, the Two-Granular-Temperature model (TGT). Since infinitesimal elastic deformation in solid-like regime and significant plastic large deformation in liquid-like regime can coexist in the granular solid-liquid transition process, the material point method (MPM) was used to build an effective numerical model. Collapse of rectangular granular pile contains both the transition from granular solid to granular liquid and the inverse process, thus in this work we carried out collapse experiment with clay particles, and simulated the experiment with our continuum model and an open-source DEM model YADE to study the transition processes. Results between experiment and simulations were compared and good agreements on collapse shape and velocity profiles were achieved, and the new model proposed in this work seems to work well on the description of granular solid-liquid transition.