MIT News - April 6, 2012
Sand in an hourglass might seem simple and straightforward, but such granular materials are actually tricky to model. From far away, flowing sand resembles a liquid, streaming down the center of an hourglass like water from a faucet. But up close, one can make out individual grains that slide against each other, forming a mound at the base that holds its shape, much like a solid.
Sand's curious behavior -- part fluid, part solid -- has made it difficult for researchers to predict how it and other granular materials flow under various conditions. A precise model for granular flow would be particularly useful in optimizing processes such as pharmaceutical manufacturing and grain production, where tiny pills and grains pour through industrial chutes and silos in mass quantities. When they aren't well-controlled, such large-scale flows can cause blockages that are costly and sometimes dangerous to clear.
Now Ken Kamrin of MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering has come up with a model that predicts the flow of granular materials under a variety of conditions. The model improves on existing models by taking into account one important factor: how the size of a grain affects the entire flow. Kamrin and Georg Koval, assistant professor of civil engineering at the National Institute of Applied Sciences in Strasbourg, France, used the new model to predict sand flow in several configurations -- including a chute and a circular trough -- and found that the model's predictions were a near-perfect match with actual results. A paper detailing the new model will appear in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Read more at MIT News: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/sand-modeling-0406.html