Research Projects

Particulate materials, found in nature and industry, have a lack of kinematics and mechanics models. This proposal aims to refine and validate models for two classes of these materials: dry granular materials and particle-liquid suspensions. The focus is on dense, slow flow regimes where sustained frictional contact is a dominant or important mechanism of momentum transport. Recent research has developed a stress model for static grain assemblies, a non-local model for slow granular flow, and a model for discontinuous shear thickening in dense particle-liquid suspensions. These models will be tested in practical geometries and validated experimentally in some canonical flows. The investigation will involve mathematical modelling, experiments, and particle dynamics simulations using the discrete element method (DEM).