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Submerged planar granular column collapse: fluid fluxes at the collapsing granular front
Pinzón, Gustavo Cabrera, Miguel Angel
Pinzón, Gustavo
Cabrera, Miguel Angel
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2019
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Abstract
Understanding of particle-fluid interactions in a kinematic system is of great importance in the assessment and mitigation of natural mass flows (i.e., debris flows, submarine landslides, pyroclastic density currents). Previous research has pointed on the crucial role of the solid packing fraction in the motion of saturated and submerged granular systems. However, issues in understanding the role and dominance of particle-fluid interactions in transitional granular flows remain a work in progress. The granular column collapse allows a simplification of the complex dynamics observed in those systems, in which a granular assembly is organized with a given aspect ratio, between its initial height and initial width (a=H0/R0), and let to collapse by self-weight onto a horizontal surface. This work presents a new approach to study submerged granular columns through the use of a modified planar model, incorporating a novel gate mechanism that does not interact with the surrounding fluid nor the granular media. Dye fluid is added to visualize the behaviour of the fluid enclosing the granular mass. Experimental results allow the formulation of an interaction mechanism between the particles and the surrounding fluid, identifying the fluid inflow into the column at release, followed by an recirculating outflow during the column spreading. These fluxes between the mobile mass and the fluid result in vortices next to the surface, entraining particles and mixing the surrounding fluids. The insights and conclusions gained in this research can be applied to the development and validation of analytical and numerical models studying the motion of immersed granular flows.
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