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A scaling law for the length of granular jumps down smooth inclines

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2023

Andrés Escobar
Affiliation:
Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, INRAE, IRD, Grenoble INP‡, IGE, 38000 Grenoble, France School of Civil Engineering, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
François Guillard
Affiliation:
School of Civil Engineering, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
Itai Einav
Affiliation:
School of Civil Engineering, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
Thierry Faug*
Affiliation:
Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, INRAE, IRD, Grenoble INP‡, IGE, 38000 Grenoble, France
*
Email address for correspondence: thierry.faug@inrae.fr

Abstract

Granular jumps commonly develop during granular flows over complex topographies or when hitting retaining structures. While this process has been well-studied for hydraulic flows, in granular flows such jumps remain to be fully explored, given the role of interparticle friction. Predicting the length of granular jumps is a challenging question, relevant to the design of protection dams against avalanches. In this study, we investigate the canonical case of standing jumps formed in granular flows down smooth inclines using extensive numerical simulations based on the discrete element method. We consider both two- and three-dimensional configurations and vary the chute bottom friction to account for the crucial interplay between the sliding along the smooth bottom and the shearing across the granular bulk above. By doing so, we derived a robust scaling law for the jump length that is valid over a wide range of Froude numbers and takes into account the influence of the packing density. The findings have potential implications on a number of situations encountered in industry as well as problems associated with natural hazards.

Information

Type
JFM Rapids
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press
Figure 0

Figure 1. (a) Sketch of a typical simulated granular jump. The circular-shaped inset shows the velocity profile $u(z)$ close to the smooth bottom with slip velocity $u_s$, as systematically observed in figure 2. (b) Snapshots from 2-D (top) and 3-D (bottom) DEM simulations. Examples with $\zeta =24\deg, H/d=10, \mu _b=0.24, \mu =0.54, d=4$ cm. In all panels, g refers to gravity acceleration $g = 9.81\ {\rm m}\ {\rm s}^{-2}$.

Figure 1

Figure 2. Influence of $\mu _b$ on velocity profiles at jump start for 2-D (a) and 3-D (b) simulations. Dashed lines in (a,b) refer to the Bagnold profile best fit. (c) Influence of $\mu _b$ on $\bar {u}/\sqrt {gd}$ and $h/d$. Examples for $\zeta = 24\,\deg$, $d=4$ cm, $\mu =0.54$ and $H/d=15$.

Figure 2

Figure 3. (a) Normalized jump length $L/d$ vs Froude number $\mathcal {F}$ for different $\mu _b/\mu$. In inset: an example for all 3-D periodic jumps for different opening heights of the tank ($\mu _b=0.25$, $\mu =0.54$). Panels (b,c) show the streamlines for two extreme jumps (data shown in inset of (a)): steep jump with recirculation (b) and laminar jump (c).

Figure 3

Figure 4. Scaling for the jump length using the depth-averaged Froude number $\mathcal {F}$ based on mass hold-up and the basal Froude number $\mathcal {F}_s$. Here, $R^2$ is the coefficient of determination for the fits based on (4.1). Inset: same data in logarithmic scales.

Figure 4

Figure 5. (a) Scaling for sliding velocity $u_s$ considering (4.2); (b) $u_s$ vs $\bar {u}$ with a bigger scatter of data at higher $\mu _b$, despite the practically apparent linear trend.

Figure 5

Figure 6. Predicted jump length $L_P$ against measured jump length $L_M$: (a) 2-D results, (b) 3-D results. Insets are the histogram of error, defined as $2(L_P-L_M)/(L_P+L_M)$.

Figure 6

Figure 7. Predicted jump length ratio $L_{P}/h$ vs measured $L_{M}/h$ for 2-D (a) and 3-D (b) cases. The dashed line shows the line of equality in both plots.

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