Chute Flows of Granular Material: Some Computer Simulations

A computer simulation has been developed to describe unidirectional flows of granular materials. Results are presented for a simulation of the two-dimensional flow of disks or cylinders down an inclined plane or chute. Velocity and solid fraction profiles were measured from the simulated systems and compared with theoretical analyses and are compared with the limited experimental results now available. The behavior is shown to be critically dependent on a third field quantity—the “granular temperature”—a measure of the kinetic energy contained in the random motions of the particles.