https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201714009037
The role of fluid viscosity in an immersed granular collapse
1 Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Haking Wong Building, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong
2 Departamento de Matemática, Universidade de Brasília, Campus Universitário Darcy Ribeiro, 70910-900 Brasília, DF, Brazil
* e-mail: fkwok8@hku.hk
Published online: 30 June 2017
Instabilities of immersed slopes and cliffs can lead to catastrophic events that involve a sudden release of huge soil mass. The scaled deposit height and runout distance are found to follow simple power laws when a granular column collapses on a horizontal plane. However, if the granular column is submerged in a fluid, the mobility of the granular collapse due to high inertia effects will be reduced by fluid-particle interactions. In this study, the effects of fluid viscosity on granular collapse is investigated qualitatively by adopting a numerical approach based on the coupled lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) and discrete element method (DEM). It is found that the granular collapse can be dramatically slowed down due to the presence of viscous fluids. For the considered granular configuration, when the fluid viscosity increases. the runout distance decreases and the final deposition shows a larger deposit angle.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2017
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
