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Bottlenecks in granular flow: when does an obstacle increase the flow rate in an hourglass?
F Alonso-Marroquin1, S I Azeezullah, S A Galindo-Torres
1School of Civil Engineering, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia. fernando.alonso@sydney.edu.au
Abstract:
Bottlenecks occur in a wide range of situations from pedestrians, ants, cattle, and traffic flow to the transport of granular materials. We examine granular flow across a bottleneck using simulations of monodisperse disks. Contrary to expectations but consistent with previous work, we find that the flow rate across a bottleneck actually increases if an obstacle is optimally placed before it. Using the hourglass theory and a velocity-density relation, we show that the peak flow rate corresponds to a transition from free flow to congested flow, similar to the phase transition in traffic flow.
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