TY - JOUR
T1 - A granular energy-controlled boundary condition for discrete element simulations of granular flows on erodible surfaces
AU - Zhu, Chongqiang
AU - Huang, Yu
AU - Sun, Jin
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors acknowledge the support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51808401, 42120104008, 41831291, and 41728006), the UK Natural Environment Research Council (Grant Nos. NE/W004240/1, NE/T010517/1 and NE/R011001/1), and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant Nos. 2017M620167 and 2020T130472).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
PY - 2023/2
Y1 - 2023/2
N2 - Entrainment of the substrate, which can cause the volume of geophysical flows to increase by many times and greatly affects its mobility, occurs frequently. Even though many large-scale studies have been conducted to investigate entrainment during flows, particle-scale studies are urgently needed to understand this complex process. We propose a novel configuration with an energy-controlled boundary to model inclined granular flows on erodible surfaces with the aim of investigating the rheological features of granular flows with entrainment. The erosion degree is controlled by adjusting the energy of the bottom granular bed. The bulk velocity, stress, microstructure, and constitutive behavior are systematically analyzed. Our simulations capture the exponentially decaying velocity in the creeping region, confirming that this configuration can be applied to study geophysical flows with entrainment. The velocity at the free surface increases with erosion depth, which means entrainment can greatly enhance the mobility of granular flow. However, the flow in the shear band still belongs to the inertial regime. The novel energy-controlled configuration provides effective and efficient way to investigate granular flows on erodible surfaces, serving as an initial step to understand geophysical flows involving entrainment, which is essential to develop new geo-disaster mitigation strategy.
AB - Entrainment of the substrate, which can cause the volume of geophysical flows to increase by many times and greatly affects its mobility, occurs frequently. Even though many large-scale studies have been conducted to investigate entrainment during flows, particle-scale studies are urgently needed to understand this complex process. We propose a novel configuration with an energy-controlled boundary to model inclined granular flows on erodible surfaces with the aim of investigating the rheological features of granular flows with entrainment. The erosion degree is controlled by adjusting the energy of the bottom granular bed. The bulk velocity, stress, microstructure, and constitutive behavior are systematically analyzed. Our simulations capture the exponentially decaying velocity in the creeping region, confirming that this configuration can be applied to study geophysical flows with entrainment. The velocity at the free surface increases with erosion depth, which means entrainment can greatly enhance the mobility of granular flow. However, the flow in the shear band still belongs to the inertial regime. The novel energy-controlled configuration provides effective and efficient way to investigate granular flows on erodible surfaces, serving as an initial step to understand geophysical flows involving entrainment, which is essential to develop new geo-disaster mitigation strategy.
KW - Discrete element method
KW - Entrainment
KW - Granular rheology
KW - Heap
KW - Surface flow
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85141335704&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.compgeo.2022.105115
DO - 10.1016/j.compgeo.2022.105115
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85141335704
SN - 0266-352X
VL - 154
JO - Computers and Geotechnics
JF - Computers and Geotechnics
M1 - 105115
ER -