Seminar on Granular Flow in a Rotating Drum
Date:
Title: Granular Flow in a Rotating Drum: From Dry, Wet, to Submerged Conditions
Abstract: Understanding granular flow is of vital importance in many geophysical problems and industrial applications, such as landslides, mineral handling, additive manufacturing, and food processing. We investigated rheological and segregation behaviour of granular media in a rotating drum, exhibiting dependency on interstitial fluids. From dry, wet (partially saturated) to submerged conditions, we conduct experiments and numerical simulations to study granular flows in rotating drums. In wet conditions, we focus on varying the strength of cohesion (surface tension) and rotation conditions within the modes of rolling and cascading flow. We extract statistical information on the formation of clusters and find a power law relation between the cluster size distribution and characteristic cluster size distributions. For fully dry or submerged conditions, numerical results show excellent match with experimental observations from mono- and binary systems, whilst revealing the rich internal dynamics. The observations from experiments and simulations reveal four distinct mixing states—from well mixed states to complicated density-driven segregation patterns with increasing numbers of vortices. Finally, we will discuss how intestinal fluids impact on the flow and its implications on industrial processes.