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The compressible granular collapse in a fluid as a continuum: validity of a Navier–Stokes model with $\mu (J)$, $\phi (J)$-rheology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 March 2021

Matthias Rauter*
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, University of Oslo, Oslo N-0851, Norway Department of Natural Hazards, Norwegian Geotechnical Institute, Oslo N-0806, Norway Department of Geotechnical and Tunnel Engineering, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck A-6020, Austria
*
†Email address for correspondence: matthiar@uio.no

Abstract

The incompressible $\mu (I)$-rheology has been used to study subaerial granular flows with remarkable success. For subaquatic granular flows, drag between grains and the pore fluid is substantially higher and the physical behaviour is more complex. High drag forces constrain the rearrangement of grains and dilatancy, leading to a considerable buildup of pore pressure. Its transient and dynamic description is the key to modelling subaquatic granular flows but out of the scope of incompressible models. In this work, we advance from the incompressible $\mu (I)$-rheology to the compressible $\mu (J)$, $\phi (J)$-rheology to account for pore pressure, dilatancy and the scaling laws under subaquatic conditions. The model is supplemented with critical state theory to yield the correct properties in the quasi-static limit. The pore fluid is described by an additional set of conservation equations and the interaction with grains is described by a drag model. This new implementation enables us to include most of the physical processes relevant for submerged granular flows in a highly transparent manner. Both the incompressible and compressible rheologies are implemented into OpenFOAM, and various simulations at low and high Stokes numbers are conducted with both frameworks. We found a good agreement of the $\mu (J)$, $\phi (J)$-rheology with low-Stokes-number experiments, which incompressible models fail to describe. The combination of granular rheology, pore pressure and drag model leads to complex phenomena such as apparent cohesion, remoulding, hydroplaning and turbidity currents. The simulations give remarkable insights into these phenomena and increase our understanding of subaquatic mass transports.

Information

Type
JFM Papers
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press
Figure 0

Figure 1. Definition of phase fractions $\phi _i$ and phase velocities $\boldsymbol {u}_i$ inside and outside a dense granular avalanche for the two-phase model. Phase velocities can differ, allowing phase fractions to change, giving the avalanche compressible properties.

Figure 1

Figure 2. Representative volume element of a grain–fluid mixture. The effective pressure $p_{{s}}$ (red arrows) represents normal forces in the grain skeleton (black arrows). The pore pressure (blue arrows) represents pressure that is equally shared by pore fluid and grains.

Figure 2

Figure 3. Definition of component indicator functions $\alpha _i$ and the velocity $\bar {\boldsymbol {u}}$ inside and outside a dense granular avalanche for the two-component model.

Figure 3

Figure 4. (a) Effective pressure $p_{{s}}$ following the $\phi (I)$ relation as a function of packing density $\phi _{{g}}$ and deviatoric shear rate $\|{\boldsymbol{\mathsf{S}}}_{{g}}\|$. The dashed lines show the original relation of Forterre & Pouliquen (2008), the continuous coloured lines show the modified relation and the black line shows the quasi-static limit following Johnson & Jackson (1987). (b) The critical packing density as a function of particle pressure $p_{{s}}$ and deviatoric shear rate $\|{\boldsymbol{\mathsf{S}}}_{{g}}\|$. The dashed lines follow the original $\phi (I)$ relation, and the continuous lines show the modified version. The critical state theory would result in horizontal lines in this plot.

Figure 4

Figure 5. (a) Particle pressure $p_{{s}}$ following the $\phi (J)$ relation as a function of packing density $\phi _{{g}}$ and deviatoric shear rate $\|{\boldsymbol{\mathsf{S}}}_{{g}}\|$. The dashed lines show the original relation of Boyer et al. (2011), the continuous coloured lines show the modified relation and the black line shows the static limit expressed following Johnson & Jackson (1987). (b) The critical packing density as a function of particle pressure $p_{{s}}$ and deviatoric shear rate $\|{\boldsymbol{\mathsf{S}}}_{{g}}\|$. The dashed lines follow the original $\phi (J)$ relation, and the continuous lines show the modified version. The grey area shows the region where only creeping shear rates below $S_0$ are allowed.

Figure 5

Figure 6. Drag coefficient $k_{{gc}}$ (a) and permeability $\kappa$ (b) following the Kozeny–Carman relation (Pailha & Pouliquen 2009) for various grain diameters (colour) and packing densities ($x$-axis).

Figure 6

Figure 7. Experimental column collapse set-up of Balmforth & Kerswell (2005). The aspect ration $H/L$ has been varied throughout the experiments. We will focus on the experiment with $L=0.2~{\textrm {m}}$ and $H=0.1~{\textrm {m}}$, similar to Savage et al. (2014).

Figure 7

Table 1. Material parameters for the subaerial granular collapse simulations. Note that not all material parameters are required by all models.

Figure 8

Figure 8. Total pressure, assumed to match the effective pressure in the two-component model (subaerial case). The black arrows represent the velocity. The continuous black line shows the free surface of the slide ($\alpha _{{s}} = 0.5$); the dashed black line in panel ($c$) shows the final experimental pile shape of Balmforth & Kerswell (2005).

Figure 9

Figure 9. Pore pressure (a–c) and effective pressure (d–f) in the two-phase model (subaerial case). The arrows show the average velocity (a–c) and the relative velocity (d–f). The continuous black line shows the free surface of the slide ($\phi _{{g}} = 0.25$); the dashed black line in panels ($c$) and ($\,f$) shows the final experimental pile shape of Balmforth & Kerswell (2005).

Figure 10

Figure 10. Experimental column collapse set-up of Rondon et al. (2011). The packing density and the aspect ratio have been varied in the experiment. We will focus on a densely and a loosely packed case, similar to Savage et al. (2014).

Figure 11

Table 2. Material parameters for the subaquatic granular collapse simulations. Note that not all material parameters are required by all models.

Figure 12

Figure 11. Effective pressure at $t=0.2\ \textrm {s}$ (a), $t=0.4\ \textrm {s}$ (b) and $t=1.0\ \textrm {s}$ (c) in the two-component model (subaquatic dense case). The black arrows represent the velocity. The continuous black line shows the free surface of the slide ($\alpha _{{s}} = 0.5$); the dashed black line in panel ($c$) shows the final experimental pile shape of Rondon et al. (2011).

Figure 13

Figure 12. Pore pressure (a–f) and effective pressure (g–l) at $t=0.05\ \textrm {s}$ (a,g), $t=0.5\ \textrm {s}$ (b,h), $t=1\ \textrm {s}$ (c,i), $t=3\ \textrm {s}$ (d,j), $t=6\ \textrm {s}$ (e,k) and the final state (f,l) using the two-phase model (subaquatic dense case). The black arrows represent the average velocity (a–f) and the relative velocity (g–l). The final state ($t_{{end}}$) is reached at $t=10\ \textrm {s}$ in the simulation (small velocities remain) but at $t=30\ \textrm {s}$ in the experiment. The black line shows the free surface of the slide, assumed at $\phi _{{s}}=0.25$. The free surface of the experiment is shown for comparison as a black dashed line in the six lowest panels.

Figure 14

Figure 13. Pore pressure (a–e) and effective pressure (f–j) at $t=0.05\ \textrm {s}$ (a,f), $t=0.25\ \textrm {s}$ (b,g), $t=0.65\ \textrm {s}$ (c,h), $t=1.30\ \textrm {s}$ (d,i) and the final state ($t_{{end}} = 6.0\ \textrm {s}$) (e,j) using the two-phase model (subaquatic loose case). The black arrows represent the average velocity (a–e) and the relative velocity (f–j). The black line shows the free surface of the slide, assumed at $\phi _{{s}}=0.25$. The free surface of the experiment is shown for comparison as a black dashed line in the six lowest panels.

Figure 15

Figure 14. The excess pore pressure as a function of time for the subaquatic granular collapses. The loose simulation (red) shows a strong peak of excess pore pressure that exceeds the experimental measurement (upper black dashed line). The dense simulation (blue) fits the experimental measurement (lower black dashed line) well. The two-component simulation forms a horizontal line at $p=0\ \textrm {Pa}$, as it neglects excess pore pressure.

Figure 16

Figure 15. Selected snapshots of the experiments from Rondon et al. (2011) (a,d,g), the simulations (b,e,h) and corresponding sketches (c,f,i). The distance between marks on the axes is $0.02\ \textrm {m}$. The snapshots highlight the gliding of a cohesive block and breaching (a,b,c), the remoulding of the block due to shearing (d,e,f) and the formation of hydroplaning and turbidity currents (g,h,i) at the loose front.

Figure 17

Figure 16. Pile shape at $t=0.8\ \textrm {s}$ of the subaerial granular collapse with various values for $\nu _{{max}}$ using the two-component model. The high influence of this numerical parameter and the unphysical effect of low values is clearly visible. The dashed black line shows the final pile shape of the experiment for comparison. The two-phase model behaves similarly.

Figure 18

Figure 17. Grid sensitivity of the two-component model for the subaerial case. The model behaves similarly in the subaquatic cases. The black dashed line shows the experimental final pile shape for reference.

Figure 19

Figure 18. Grid sensitivity of the two-phase model for the subaerial case (a), the dense subaquatic case (b) and the subaquatic loose case (c). The black dashed lines show the experimental final pile shapes for reference.

Figure 20

Figure 19. Sensitivity of the two-component subaerial model on the time-step duration, expressed by the viscous CFL number. The solver was operated with the full momentum predictor (a) and the reduced momentum predictor (b).

Figure 21

Figure 20. Sensitivity of the two-phase model on the time-step duration, expressed by the viscous CFL number in the subaerial case (a), the subaquatic dense case (b) and the subaquatic loose case (c).

Figure 22

Figure 21. Influence of dynamic friction, dynamic effective pressure and wall friction on the final pile shape in the two-component model (a) and the two-phase model (b).

Figure 23

Figure 22. The dense granular collapse at $t=6.0\ \textrm {s}$ (a) and the loose granular collapse at $t=0.65\ \textrm {s}$ (b), simulated with critical state theory and $\mu (J)$, $\phi (J)$-rheology. The dashed black line shows the final experimental pile shape. The simulations with critical state theory clearly exceed the experiment early in the simulation.

Figure 24

Figure 23. Influence of the creep shear rate $S_0$ on the pile shape. Two time steps are shown, $t=1\ \textrm {s}$ (continuous) and $t=10\ \textrm {s}$ (dashed). The black dashed line shows the final experimental pile shape.