Flow Characteristics of Granular Bulk Materials

The paper discusses the interest in conventional triaxial tests widely used in soil mechanics for a better understanding of both the mechanical behaviour and flow characteristics of granular bulk materials. It proposes a rheological characterization of granular foodstuffs on diverse types of stress path using a conventional triaxial cell. The characteristic state concept, defining the disaggregation threshold of the granular structure, is found to be suitable and even indispensible for examining the mechanical behaviour and the flowability of stored bulk materials. The experimental results readily suggest, as an indicator of the arching effect, a rheological index that characterizes the particle interlocking breakdown and hence the flowability of the stored materials. In addition, this study offers a realistic physical meaning for parameters in use in constitutive models (yield conditions and flow rules) when describing granular flow in various hopper geometries. The case of silos equipped with vibrating hoppers necessitates additionally the study of the rheological behaviour of materials under cyclic and vibratory loadings in order to analyse the processes of densification or disaggregation conditioning the flowability of the stored materials during emptying operations.