Scale Dependence of Segregation Patterns in the Filling of Silos.

Authors

Shivakumar Athani, Benjy Marks, François Guillard, Alistair Gillespie, Itai Einav

Published in

Physical review letters. Volume 137. Issue 2. Pages 028202. Jul 10, 2026.

Abstract

Size segregation in granular flows is a well-known phenomenon: laboratory experiments consistently show that large particles migrate toward silo walls during filling, while smaller particles concentrate near the center. Paradoxically, field observations in large-scale industrial silos often report the opposite pattern, challenging these findings. We demarcate these patterns through a systematic experimental study spanning a range of dimensionless numbers relevant to bidisperse granular flows in quasi-2D silos under both dry (in air) and immersed (in liquid) conditions, varying container geometry and fluid viscosity. Image analysis reveals that the observed patterns are governed by two key dimensionless parameters: the slenderness of the silo and the Stokes number, which encapsulates the balance between particle inertia and viscous drag. Our results demonstrate the role of fluids on segregation dynamics and provide a unified scaling framework that reconciles laboratory- and field-scale observations in air.

PMID:
42503110
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 26 Jul 2026.

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