| Issue |
EPL
Volume 100, Number 3, November 2012
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | 38006 | |
| Number of page(s) | 6 | |
| Section | Interdisciplinary Physics and Related Areas of Science and Technology | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/100/38006 | |
| Published online | 22 November 2012 | |
Particle diffusion in slow granular bulk flows
1 Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratorium, Universiteit Leiden - P.O. Box 9504, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands, EU
2 Laboratoire Jean Perrin, FRE 3231, Université Pierre et Marie Curie - CNRS, Ecole Normale Supérieure 24 rue Lhomond, 75005 Paris, France, EU
3 Department of Physics, Duke University - Science Drive, Durham, NC 27708-0305, USA
Received: 30 August 2012
Accepted: 25 October 2012
We probe the diffusive motion of particles in slowly sheared three-dimensional granular suspensions. For sufficiently large strains, the particle dynamics exhibits diffusive Gaussian statistics, with the diffusivity proportional to the local strain rate —consistent with a local, quasi-static picture. Surprisingly, the diffusivity is also inversely proportional to the depth of the particles below the granular surface —at their free surface, the diffusivity thus appears to diverge and is ill defined. We find that the crossover to Gaussian displacement statistics is governed by the same depth dependence, evidencing a non-trivial strain scale in three-dimensional granular flows.
PACS: 83.80.Fg – Granular solids / 47.57.Gc – Granular flow / 83.80.Ab – Solids: e.g., composites, glasses, semicrystalline polymers
© EPLA, 2012
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