Tilting process with humidity: DEM modelling and comparison with experiments

Abstract

Granular matter is present everywhere in our practical lives and mostly used in natural environment (i.e. classical atmospheric conditions). This fact implies that the humidity rate which controls the water content can be involved in their behaviors. Especially adhesion forces between grains are linked to this humidity rate. Here we study a well known experiment defined as a laboratory test for avalanches. We continuously tilt a box filled with grains up to the appearance of precursors and full avalanches. These avalanches are directly proportional to the forces acting at the contact level between grains. We use a numerical approach based on the classical discrete element methods ‘spring-Dashpot’ with soft model. Firstly, we check the ability of our code to handle tilting experiments, then, an extra adhesion term linked to the humidity rate is added. Full comparison between ‘dry’ case and humid case is done.