Computational study of vibrated granular system with bearing-like sidewalls

The friction effect between particles and sidewalls is an important factor to influence the particles' motions in the vibrated granular system. Therefore, different patterns of particles' motions will be produced by the variation of sidewall. This study proposes an idea of bearing-like sidewall, which uses the similar structure of bearing to the sidewall, to apply to the vibrated bed. The discrete element method (DEM) is carried out to investigate the difference of particles' motions in the three-dimensional vibrated granular systems with bearing-like sidewalls and fixed plane sidewalls. The results shows that the convection flow strength of the case with larger ratio of bearing diameter to particle diameter (e.g. D*=1) is stronger than that of the case with fixed plane sidewall. However, for the cases with bearing-like sidewalls, the convection flow strength decreases apparently with decreasing D*. In addition, comparing to the fixed plane sidewall, the bearing-like sidewall promotes higher granular temperature in the vibrated bed that means the fluctuation motions of particles are greater. For the vibrated bed with bearing-like sidewall, the smaller D* makes the pattern of particle motion with symmetric convection cell to tend to disappear and reduced the granular temperature.