Investigation of the reservoir as a feeder of inclined granular flows

Abstract

Hoppers or reservoirs are universally used as feeders for granular flows down inclined planes or chutes. Here we numerically investigated the influences of geometrical factors, such as inclination angles of reservoir \(\theta _{r}\) and plane \(\theta _{p}\), and the gate height H, on the granular flow. It was found if \(\theta _{r}\) is fixed and \(\theta _{p}>\theta _{r}\), there will be a little discrepancy in flow rate when the inclination angle of the plane \(\theta _{p}\) varies. Compared with the flows from tilted concentric hopper, the correlation between the flow rate and \(\theta _{r}\) in reservoir is different due to specific geometric configuration. Moreover, the flow rate obeys Beverloo’s law with various H. Additionally, the spatial fields of the inclined flows were plotted and the flow from eccentric hoppers was simulated.