Experimental methodology for study of granular material flow using digital speckle photography.

Granular material flow occurs in many industrial applications, and the characteristics of such flow is challenging to measure. Therefore, an experimental method that captures the flow behavior at different loading situations is desired. In this work, experimental measurements of granular material flow with digital speckle photography (DSP) are carried out. The granular flow process is recorded with a high-speed camera; the image series are then analyzed using the DSP method. This approach enables field data such as displacement, velocity, and strain fields to be visualized during the granular material flow process. Three different scenarios were studied: free surface flow in a fill shoe, flow without a free surface in a fill shoe, and the rearrangement of material in a cavity. The results showed that it is possible to obtain field data of the motion of particles for all three scenarios with the DSP technique. The presented experimental methodology can be used to capture complex flow behavior of granular material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]