The effect of obstacles near a silo outlet on the discharge of soft spheres

Abstract

Soft smooth particles in silo discharge show peculiar characteristics, including, for example, non-permanent clogging and intermittent flow. This paper describes a study of soft, low-frictional hydrogel spheres in a quasi-2D silo. We enforce a more competitive behavior of these spheres during their discharge by placing an obstacle in front of the outlet of the silo. High-speed optical imaging is used to capture the process of discharge. All particles in the field of view are identified and tracked by means of machine learning software using a mask region-based convolutional neural network algorithm. With particle tracking velocimetry, the fields of velocity, egress time, packing fraction, and kinetic stress are analyzed in this study. In pedestrian dynamics, it is known that the placement of an obstacle in front of a narrow gate may reduce the stress near the exit and enable a more efficient egress. The effect is opposite for our soft grains. Placing an obstacle above the orifice always led to a reduction of the flow rates, in some cases even to increased clogging probabilities.