Critical comparison of polydisperse kinetic theories using bidisperse DEM data

Kinetic theories have been developed to describe the hydrodynamics of polydisperse granular flows under different theoretical assumptions. In this study, six species theories are assessed using the DEM data obtained from simple shear flow containing bidisperse particles with low and moderate solid vol-ume fraction (Galvin, 2007). It was shown that (i) only the theories of Iddir and Arastoopour (2005) and Zhao and Wang (2021) can qualitatively capture all of the effects of various parameters on the gran-ular temperature ratio and the normal and shear stresses; (ii) the granular temperature ratio can be pre-dicted accurately either by Iddir and Arastoopour (2005) or Zhao and Wang (2021), depending on the input parameters; and (iii) the predictions of normal and shear stresses by Iddir and Arastoopour (2005) are superior in matching the DEM data for most tested cases. Present study not only discusses the fundamental differences between different species kinetic theories, but also offers a critical assess-ment of their suitability in modeling simple shear flow. (c) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This study evaluates the suitability of six species kinetic theories in modeling simple shear flow. The results show that only two theories can qualitatively capture the effects of different parameters on the granular temperature ratio and stresses, and one of them has more accurate predictions, while the other theory matches the normal and shear stresses with experimental data better.