Velocity scaling in the region of orifice influence in silo draining under gravity

This study utilizes computations based on a soft-particle discrete element method for investigating the scaling of velocity in the region of orifice influence situated directly above and in proximity to the outlet in a two-dimensional silo. The velocity at the exit scales with the outlet size (D), in striking agreement with the earlier studies. However, the scaling of velocity upstream of the outlet with D as the length scale does not exist. Consequently, we present a scaling with a length parameter h_{e} being the height of an equi-inertial curve, which is defined to be a curve on which the inertial number is constant, thereby consolidating the coexisting different flow regimes in a discharging silo. The velocity corresponding to an equi-inertial curve, when measured relative to the velocity at the outlet, scales very well with h_{e} for low inertial numbers belonging to the dense flow regime. However, such scaling does not hold for high inertial numbers corresponding to the rapid flow regime in the region located closer to the orifice. We tie this scaling breakdown to the velocity fluctuations in light of the similarity between the profiles of scaled relative velocity and the scaled kinetic pressure, suggesting h_{e} to be a promising candidate for unifying the kinematics of granular flow near the outlet in the silo.