Silo discharge of binary granular mixtures

Abstract

We present numerical and experimental results on the mass flow rate during the discharge of three-dimensional silos filled with a bidisperse mixture of grains of different sizes. We analyzed the influence of the ratio between coarse and fine particles on the profile of volume fraction and velocity across the orifice. By using numerical simulations, we have shown that the velocity profile has the same shape as that in the monodisperse case and is insensitive to the composition of the mixture. On the contrary, the volume fraction profile is strongly affected by the composition of the mixture. Assuming that an effective particle size can be introduced to characterize the mixture, we have shown that previous expression for the mass flow rate of monodisperse particles can be used for binary mixtures. A comparison with Beverloo's correlation is also presented.