Clogging and jamming transitions in periodic obstacle arrays.

Abstract

We numerically examine clogging transitions for bidisperse disks flowing through a two-dimensional periodic obstacle array. We show that clogging is a probabilistic event that occurs through a transition from a homogeneous flowing state to a heterogeneous or phase-separated jammed state where the disks form dense connected clusters. The probability for clogging to occur during a fixed time increases with increasing particle packing and obstacle number. For driving at different angles with respect to the symmetry direction of the obstacle array, we show that certain directions have a higher clogging susceptibility. It is also possible to have a size-specific clogging transition in which one disk size becomes completely immobile while the other disk size continues to flow.