Maximum angle of stability in wet and dry spherical granular media

Maximum Angle of Stability of a Wet Granular Pile

Anyone who has built a sandcastle recognizes that the addition of liquid to granular materials increases their stability. However, measurements of this increased stability often conflict with theory and with each other [1–7]. A friction-based Mohr-Coulomb model has been developed [3, 8]. However, it distinguishes between granular friction and inter-particle friction, and uses the former without...

Wet granular materials

Most studies on granular physics have focused on dry granular media, with no liquids between the grains. However, in geology and many real world applications (e.g., food processing, pharmaceuticals, ceramics, civil engineering, constructions, and many industrial applications), liquid is present between the grains. This produces inter-grain cohesion and drastically modifies the mechanical proper...

Stability, Avalanches, and Flow in Dry and Wet Granular Materials

Liquid migration in sheared unsaturated granular media

We show how liquid migrates in sheared unsaturated granular media using a grain scale model for capillary bridges. Liquid is redistributed to neighboring contacts after rupture of individual capillary bridges leading to redistribution of liquid on large scales. The liquid profile evolution coincides with a recently developed continuum description for liquid migration in shear bands. The velocit...

Tsunami generated by a granular collapse down a rough inclined plane

In this Letter, we experimentally investigate the collapse of initially dry granular media into water and the subsequent impulse waves. We systematically characterize the influence of the slope angle and the granular material on the initial amplitude of the generated leading wave and the evolution of its amplitude during the propagation. The experiments show that whereas the evolution of the le...