Silo discharge: Dynamic effects of granular flow

In this work a numerical simulation of silo discharge processes is presented. A new advanced nonlinear hypoplastic constitutive law for the bulk solids with a new approach for the viscosity is adapted, and dynamic effects are especially studied. The dynamical behaviour of the discharge process is described by a system of nonlinear differential equations in the EULERian reference frame. Via the Finite Element Method (FEM), the velocity field of the flowing material, its density and pressure distribution can be calculated without the need of re-meshing the FE grid. The numerical simulation examples are chosen to be similar to an experimental test-silo for comparing the results with measured values. 1