Stress profiles for tapered cylindrical cavities in granular media (Q5938356)

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.