The constitutive relation for the granular flow of rough particles, and its application to the flow down an inclined plane

Abstract

A perturbation expansion of the Boltzmann equation is used to derive constitutive relations for the granular flow of rough spheres in the limit where the energy dissipation in a collision is small compared to the energy of a particle. In the collision model, the post-collisional relative normal velocity at the point of contact is -e_n times the pre-collisional normal velocity, and the post-collisional relative tangential velocity at the point of contact is -e_t times the pre-collisional relative tangential velocity. A perturbation expansion is employed in the limit (1 - e_n) {=} varepsilon(2) « 1, and (1 - e_t(2)) ~ varepsilon(2) « 1, so that e_t is close to ± 1. In the 'rough' particle model, the normal coefficient of restitution e_n is close to 1, and the tangential coefficient of restitution e_t is close to 1. In the 'partially rough' particle model, the normal coefficient of restitution e_n is close to 1; and the tangential coefficient of restitution e_t is close to -1 if the angle between the relative velocity vector and the line joining the centres of the particles is greater than the 'roughness angle' (chosen to be (upi/4) in the present calculation), and is close to 1 if the angle between the relative velocity vector and the line joining the centres is less than the roughness angle. The conserved variables in this case are mass and momentum; energy is not a conserved variable in the 'adiabatic limit' considered here, when the length scale is large compared to the 'conduction length'. The results for the constitutive relations show that in the Navier Stokes approximation, the form of the constitutive relation is identical to that for smooth particles, but the coefficient of shear viscosity for rough particles is 10% 50% higher than that for smooth particles. The coefficient of bulk viscosity, which is zero in the dilute limit for smooth particles, is found to be non-zero for rough and partially rough particles, owing to the transport of energy between the translational and rotational modes. In the Burnett approximation, there is an antisymmetric component in the stress tensor for rough and partially rough particles, which is not present for smooth particles.