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Updated: May 16, 2026

Visually Based Characterization of the Incipient Particle Motion in Regular Substrates: From Laminar to Turbulent Conditions
Published on: February 22, 2018
Frictional dependence of shallow-granular flows from discrete particle simulations
Anthony R Thornton1, Thomas Weinhart, Stefan Luding
1Multi-Scale Mechanics, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands. a.r.thornton@utwente.nl
Abstract:
A shallow-layer model for granular flows down inclines is completed with a closure relation for the macroscopic bed friction obtained from micro-scale, discrete particle simulations of steady flows over geometrically rough bases with contact friction. Microscopic friction can be different between bulk particles and with particles at the base, where the latter is systematically varied. When extending the known friction closure relation to be a function of both bulk flow and bed properties, surprisingly, we find that the macroscopic bed friction is only weakly dependent on the contact friction of the bed particles and is predominantly determined by the properties of the flowing particles. Implications for constitutive modelling and possible experiments to better understand the bulk rheology are discussed.
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