Thermal transients and convective particle motion in dense granular materials

The mechanism of dry granular convection within dense granular flows is mostly neglected by current analytical heat equations describing such materials, for example, in geophysical analyses of shear gouge layers of earthquake and landslide rupture planes. In dry granular materials, the common assumption is that conduction by contact overtakes any other mode of heat transfer. Conversely, we discover that transient correlated motion of heated grains can result in a convective heat flux normal to the shear direction up to 3-4 orders magnitude larger than by contact conduction. Such a thermal efficiency, much higher than that of water, is appealing and might be common to other microscopically structured fluids such as granular pastes, emulsions, and living cells.