Study of Granular Material Multi-scale Characteristics from Complex Network Perspective

Abstract

Granular materials are widely used in the chemical industry, and have been widely studied since they exhibit unusual and distinct properties. Nevertheless, the understanding of the flow behaviors in granular materials is not well established. In this paper, a multi-scale structural study of granular flow based from complex network perspective is hence performed to provide a better understanding of the fundamental mechanisms. Two length scales, the macroscopic and the microscopic levels, are considered. At the macroscopic level, the flow patterns of particles are investigated using DEM. The particle size distribution (PSD) has great effects on particles. The orifice size had a minimal impact for mono-sized granular materials. The granular materials with uniform PSD had maximum network efficiency, indicating more restricted in particles flow. At the microscopic level, the spatial and statistical distributions of micro-dynamic variables related to PSD were established. It has been found that there were hierarchical structures in the networks.