A numerical study of dynamics in thin hopper flow and granular jet*

Abstract

The dynamics of granular material discharging from a cuboid but thin hopper, including the hopper flow and granular jet, are investigated via discrete element method (DEM) simulations. The slot width is varied to study its influence on the flow. It is found the flow in the cuboid hopper has similarity with the flow in two-dimensional (2D) hopper. When the slot width is large, the flowrate is higher than the predicted value from Beverloo’s law and the velocity distribution is not Gaussian-like. For granular jet, there is a transition with varying slot width. For large slot width, there is a dense core in the jet and the variations of velocities and density are relatively small. Finally, the availability of continuum model is assessed and the results show that the performance with large slot width is better than that with small slot width.