Granular flow through an aperture: Influence of obstacles near the outlet

Abstract

We study how the presence of obstacles in a confined system of monodisperse disks affects their discharge through an aperture. The disks are driven by a horizontal conveyor belt that moves at constant velocity. The mean packing fraction at the outlet decreases as the distance between the obstacles and the aperture decreases. The obstacles organize the dynamics of the stagnant zones in two characteristic behaviors that differ mainly in the magnitude of the fluctuations of the fraction of stagnant disks in the system. It is shown that the effective aperture is reduced by the presence of obstacles.