Dense shearing flows of soft, frictional cylinders.

We perform discrete numerical simulations at a constant volume of dense, steady, homogeneous flows of true cylinders interacting via Hertzian contacts, with and without friction, in the absence of preferential alignment. We determine the critical values of the solid volume fraction and the average number of contacts per particle above which rate-independent components of the stresses develop, along with a sharp increase in the fluctuations of angular velocity. We show that kinetic theory, extended to account for a velocity correlation at solid volume fractions larger than 0.49, can quantitatively predict the measured fluctuations of translational velocity, at least for sufficiently rigid cylinders, for any value of the cylinder aspect ratio and friction investigated here. The measured pressure above and below the critical solid volume fraction is in agreement with a recent theory originally intended for spheres that conjugates extended kinetic theory, the finite duration of collisions between soft particles and the development of an elastic network of long-lasting contacts responsible for the rate-independency of the flows in the supercritical regime. Finally, we find that, for sufficiently rigid cylinders, the ratio of shear stress to pressure in the subcritical regime is a linear function of the ratio of the shear rate to a suitable measure of the fluctuations of translational velocity, in qualitative accordance with kinetic theory, with an intercept that increases with friction. A decrease in the particle stiffness gives rise to nonlinear effects that greatly diminishes the stress ratio.

Deposition of non-spherical particles in bifurcating airways.

Particle morphology plays an important role in pulmonary drug delivery. Not only does particle shape affect how particles flow and deposit, the shape also influences the drug release rate from the particles. In this work, a semi-theoretical relationship is developed to describe deposition efficiency as a function of fluid and particle properties, incorporating the effect of particle shape. For the 10 different particle types studied (with aerodynamic diameters between 1 and 10 µm), three key deposition mechanisms are identified. All particles deposit through inertial impaction, and additionally deposit via sedimentation or diffusion, depending on the particle specific momentum.

Stress results from two-dimensional granular shear flow simulations using various collision models.

Collision resolution is one of the key elements in a discrete element method algorithm for modeling granular flows. Several collision models have been proposed for this process. The hard-particle collision approach is typically used for dilute systems, or for those in which the assumption of binary and instantaneous particle-particle contact remains valid. As the solids fraction increases, however, multiple, enduring collisions can occur and a soft-particle approach is more appropriate for resolving the collision dynamics. In this work, the delineation between dilute and dense systems and the suitability of contact models are explored for a range of solid fractions. Stress results for two-dimensional shear flow simulations are compared using several collision models including an event-driven hard-particle model, a hysteretic spring soft-particle collision model following Walton and Braun [J. Rheol. 30, 949 (1986)], and a hybrid hard-particle-with-overlap model following Hopkins and Louge [Phys. Fluids A 3, 47 (1991)]. Results show that stresses are accurately predicted for a range of solids fractions, coefficients of restitution, and friction coefficients by both the hard-particle-with-overlap and soft-particle models so long as a sufficiently large loading stiffness is used for the soft-particle model. Additional results investigating the accuracy of the collision models and the amount of collisional overlap are presented as functions of the simulation time step and model parameters.