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Wet granulation processes can be driven from low to high water content. In this study, we consider the model situation of the growth of a single wet aggregate rolling in a dry granular flow inside a rotating drum. We measure the time evolution of its diameter for different grains and liquids, as well as various rotation rates of the drum. Using X-ray tomography, we are able to characterize the internal structure of the granular aggregate at different times during the process. We show that the growth rate of the aggregate can be related to the transport of the liquid inside the granule and the capture of grains. We propose a model to rationalize the maximum size of the aggregate and its growth rate.

Tsunami-like waves can arise from large-scale geological events such as the collapse of a mountain flank or a volcano into a lake or an ocean. We here mimic this situation at the laboratory scale. The landslide is modeled by the sudden release of a rectangular granular column, which impacts a still water layer and generates a wave. Through experiments varying both the column dimensions and the initial water depth, three regimes of nonlinear waves of different shapes are reported. The amplitude and width of the generated waves are governed by a local Froude number based on the velocity of the granular front at the water surface.

The erosion of a cohesive soil by an impinging turbulent jet is observed, for instance, during the landing of a spacecraft or involved in the so-called jet erosion test. To provide a quantitative understanding of this situation for cohesive soils, we perform experiments using a model cohesion controlled granular material that allows us to finely tune the cohesion between particles while keeping the other properties constant. We investigate the response of this cohesive granular bed when subjected to an impinging normal turbulent jet. We characterize experimentally the effects of the cohesion on the erosion threshold and the development of the crater. We demonstrate that the results can be rationalized by introducing a cohesive Shields number that accounts for the inter-particles cohesion force. The results of our experiments highlight the crucial role of cohesion in erosion processes.

We consider experimentally the wave generation by the collapse of a dry granular column into water. Our results show that for a given aspect ratio of the initial granular column, the amplitude of the generated wave depends on the column mass and for a given mass of the granular column, two distinct regimes are observed depending on the aspect ratio of the column a: for a < 3.5, the volume of the generated wave is directly proportional to a whereas for thinner column, a > 3.5, there is a saturation of the amplitude of the wave suggesting that the leading wave is generated before the collapse is fully completed.

We study experimentally the growth dynamics of a horizontal wet granular aggregate produced by accretion when a dry granular jet impacts a wet substrate. The tomographic imaging demonstrates that the wet aggregate is fully saturated and its cohesion is related to the capillary suction due to the pressure drop at the liquid/air interface. We highlight that the accretion process is characterized by two different growth dynamics depending on the hydrostatic depression in the material. At low depression, the growth dynamics exibits a “diffusive” regime whereas the dynamics becomes linear for higher depressions. A competition between the viscous displacement of the fluid into the granular material and the sticking dynamics is proposed to understand the transition in the growth velocity.

Sintering, glass melting and other industrially relevant processes turn batches of grains into homogeneous products. Such processes involve coupled chemical and physical transformations of the granular packing. For sake of simplicity, we study how local evolutions on grains (volume decreases for example) entail mechanical rearrangements in the overall pile. Inert bidisperse metallic disks are mixed and confined in a vertical 2D cell. At the bottom of this set-up, initial intruders (one or two) have been previously set and mechanically linked to a linear motorized jack. While we quasi-statically pull the intruder(s) downward out of the cell at constant speed and constant liberated surface, we tracked the surrounding granular packing. Events largely distributed both spatially and temporally occur around intruders. We focus on the influence of the distance between the intruders on the local dynamic of the packing. We compare the distribution of the size of the event and their frequency as function of the relative position of the intruder, as a function of their radius. We show that their influence decreases rapidly. At short distance the mechanical perturbation induced by one intruder can destabilize the packing around the other.

We report on two different patterns that can be observed at the bed surface close to a vertical cylinder when submitted to a strong enough steady water flow. The classical scour pattern observed at the cylinder foot and due to the “horseshoe” vortex around occurs at a critical velocity Uc1 below the critical velocity Uc0 for erosion without any cylinder, thus under clear-water conditions. But we observe also another pattern downstream the cylinder which consists of two symmetrical ovoid holes that look like “bunny ears”. This new scour pattern referred as BES can be observed at lower velocities that the horseshoe scour (HSS), above a critical velocity Uc2 < Uc1 , with a timescale formation much higher that the one of HSS.

Many industrial processes, such as surface coating or liquid transport in tubes, involve liquid sheets or thin films of suspensions. In these situations, the thickness of the liquid film becomes comparable to the particle size, which leads to unexpected dynamics. In addition, the classical constitutive rheological law for suspensions cannot be applied as the continuum approximation is no longer valid. Here, we consider experimentally a transient particle-laden liquid sheet that expands radially. We characterize the influence of the particles on the shape of the liquid film and the atomization process. We highlight that the presence of particles modifies the thickness and stability of the liquid sheet. Our study suggests that the influence of particles through capillary effects can modify significantly the dynamics of processes that involve suspensions and particles confined in liquid films.