High speed confined granular flows down inclined: numerical simulations

International audienceNew regimes in high-speed confined granular flows down inclined have recently been obtained in numerical simulations [1]. Increasing the angle of inclination reveals the destabilization of the well known unidirectional flows. Longitudinal rolls first appear. Upon further increase of the angle, a new regime, called supported, is observed. It is characterized by a dense core surrounded by granular gas. These numerical simulations have been performed for a fixed confinement width, W = 68D, where D is the size of the grains. Here, we perform numerical simulations with a smaller value of the confinement width: W = 34D. In spite of this strong confinement, we observe the transitions to the same regimes (rolls and then supported) by increasing the inclination angle. We characterize these transitions and highlight the robustness of the mass flow rate scaling law discovered in [1]