INFLUENCE OF NUMBERS OF PARTICLE-CONTACT ON VERTICAL SEGREGATION OF BINARY GRANULAR MIXTURES

Abstract

We present a simulation study dealing with segregation in vertical shaking by extending our previous works using the so-called Brazil-nut effect (BN) and Reverse Brazil-nut effect (RBN) phenomena. We consider same layer-size of granular beads of various diameters and materials. We investigate the impact of contact dynamics of particles for various parameters of two particles species. We illustrate the potential functionality of these concepts and their key physical principles for different size and density of the two particles species. Our results show that the granular segregation is highly affected by the contacts of particles demonstrating thereby that the most plausible explanation reposes on the fact that the particles having higher contacts per particle will go to the bottom while having lower contacts per particle will accumulate on the top. By employing discrete element method, we show that larger particles have lower contacts per particle as compare to the smaller ones. Likewise, the particles with higher densities have higher contacts per particle.