Abstract
Research on granular materials is motivated by the need to understand certain geological processes and to design better bulk handling devices in industrial processes. Since granular materials exhibit properties of solids under quasi-static deformation and exhibit properties of fluid when subjected to rapid deformation in a confined area, it is vital that carefully designed experiments are conducted to characterize the properties of granular materials for different regimes of flow. The experimental research mainly focuses on the rapid deformation of granular material in a confined area. Experiments were carried out on a torsional rheometer to study how the addition of different types of lubricating oils affect the characteristics of granular material, FRAC-SAND(20/40). A brief description of the equipment and experimental procedure is given. The purpose of this experiment is to obtain experimental data to guide the development of theoretical models for wet granular media and also to obtain material moduli for existing models. For a given volumetric strain, graphs of torque, normal force for different rotation rates (RPM) and plots of shear stress, normal stress difference for different shear rates are given for different samples. Similarly, for a given shear rate, graphs of torque, normal force, shear stress and normal stress difference as a function of compaction ratios are plotted for different samples. All these results clearly show a decrease in magnitude of forces for samples corresponding to a higher viscosity lubricating oil.
Kannan, Raguraman (2002). Continuous shearing of dense and wet granular materials in a torsional rheometer. Master's thesis, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from
https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /ETD -TAMU -2002 -THESIS -K366.