Stress profiles for tapered cylindrical cavities in granular media (Q5938356): Difference between revisions

The formation of slightly tapered (symmetric) circular cavities can be observed during the flow of dry granular materials in e.g. hoppers and stock-piles, and this automatically hinders the removal of material from the storage device. To gain a better understanding of this phenomenon, the authors investigate the stress profiles which develop around these tapered cavities for Mohr-Coulomb-type materials. In doing so, they amend the classical Jenike theory in which stresses are assumed to be independent of height of the cavity, and use a perturbation of stresses up to order one in a small dimensionless parameter. It is assumed that the ``higher order stresses'' can be expressed as a sum of separable variable functions, and the governing ordinary differential equations for a slightly tapered cavity are derived for the special case of the material being in the plastic regime A (see \textit{A. D. Cox} et al. [Philos. Trans. Roy. Soc. London, Ser. A254, 1-45 (1961; Zbl 0097.19102)] for this classification). The theory is then applied to two possible shapes of cavities (single and double tapered), and numerical simulations are performed. It is shown -- as to be expected -- that deviations from the Jenike theory occur. As the focus of this paper is on the mathematical analysis of the stress profiles, a comparison to experimental evidence of such deviations from classical stress profiles is not addressed, but would have certainly been interesting.