Experimental characterization of the chaotic dynamics of cohesionless particles: application to a V-blender

So far, most of the investigations of the dynamics of granular material in blenders have been done in 2D tumblers due to the current lack of accurate measurement methods for the investigation of complex 3D flows. However, recent advances in the field of non-intrusive methods have paved the way to the characterization of the chaotic dynamics in 3D blenders. This work aims to present such an analysis in the case of a V-blender using radioactive particle tracking (RPT). Special attention is given to the chaotic properties of mixing by performing a time-series analysis of the position of a single tracer in motion in this blender. An original investigation of the mixing properties is also presented. More generally, this work shows that the mixing properties of a blender can be characterized by using tools of dynamical systems theory through a time-series analysis of data obtained from non-intrusive measurements.