Research Projects

The motion of discrete entities through narrow exits is commonly encountered in various remarkably similar situations, e.g., grains draining out from an aperture in a silo and the egress of pedestrians through a door. The flow of granular media in a silo has been a subject of research for decades, wherein a major concern is the development of an expression for the mass flow rate comprising physically justified empirical parameters. Developing a robust flow rate expression requires a thorough understanding of granular flow in the region close to the outlet. The studies reported in the literature have mainly focussed on the flow of dry, non-cohesive grains. The primary objective of this project is to build a better fundamental understanding of the dynamics of cohesive grains discharging under gravity through an outlet in a silo, utilizing computations based on the discrete element method (DEM).