RESUMO
We investigate experimentally the runout resulting from the collapse of a granular column containing two particle species that differ in size only. The experimental configuration is strictly two-dimensional (only one particle per width of the experimental tank) and we explore both the role of the initial arrangement and proportion of the two particle sizes in the column, using high-speed videography, and by determining the centres of mass of the big and small particles in the initial column and the final deposit. The duration of the experiment is sufficiently short that large-scale segregation does not occur, however, we find a clear dependence of runout on both initial mixture arrangement and proportion for all conditions. We investigated this observation through detailed analysis of the flow front motion, and identify a characteristic "stopping" phase when dissipation dominates, and we apply a shallow layer model at the flow front to show how the initial mixture arrangement and proportion influence the effective coefficient of friction during emplacement. We find that a bidispersed mixture can induce a larger friction on emplacement than a monodispersed mixture, and the highest coefficient of friction was found for a well-mixed initial arrangement of particles at the proportion that shows maximum horizontal spreading of the flow. These observations suggest that downwards percolation of fine particles takes place at the front of the collapsing column, and so localised size segregation processes at the flow front can control flow mobility. This effect is likely to be important in controlling the mobility of large geophysical flows that occur on finite time scales, and whose deposits typically show granular segregation at the front and edges but not throughout the entire deposit.
RESUMO
Evidence of the existence of a transient surface tension between two miscible fluid phases is given. This is done by making use of a density matched free of gravity perturbations, binary liquid of isobutyric acid and water, which presents a miscibility gap and is studied by light scattering. The experiment is performed very near the critical point of the binary liquid, where the diffusion of phases is extremely slow. The surface tension is deduced from the evolution of the structure factor obtained from low angle light scattering. The latter evolution is successfully analyzed in terms of a local equilibrium diffusive approach that makes explicit how the surface tension decreases with time.
RESUMO
A viscoplastic continuum theory has recently been proposed to model dense, cohesionless granular flows [P. Jop, Nature (London) 441, 727 (2006)10.1038/nature04801]. We confront this theory for the first time with a transient, three-dimensional flow situation--the simple collapse of a cylinder of granular matter onto a horizontal plane--by extracting stress and strain rate tensors directly from soft particle simulations. These simulations faithfully reproduce the different flow regimes and capture the observed scaling laws for the final deposit. Remarkably, the theoretical hypothesis that there is a simple stress-strain rate tensorial relationship does seem to hold across the whole flow even close to the rough boundary provided the flow is dense enough. These encouraging results suggest viscoplastic theory is more generally applicable to transient, multidirectional, dense flows and open the way for quantitative predictions in real applications.
