Tag Archives: cohesion
Building sandcastles grain by grain
From sugar poured into a bowl to tons of grains discharge processes in industry, a peculiar feature of granular materials emerges : the formation of a pile. When the grains are not cohesive, only the friction and the grain geometry … Continue reading
Wet sand flows better than dry sand
As any child knows, the best way to build a sandcastle is to use wet sand. Wet grains stick together due to capillary forces [1]. A castle made from dry sand will collapse under its own weight. However, we have demonstrated that, … Continue reading
Powder rheometry
In a strong collaboration with the chemistry department within the APTIS technological platform, the GRASP has developed scientific instruments for characterizing the powder properties such as flowability, rheology, cohesion index, Carr index, and tap density measurements. Four instruments are now distributed … Continue reading
Relative Humidity matters
Although experimentalists suspect some effect of the Relative Humidity (RH) on the physical properties of granular materials, almost no author reports the value of RH besides his data. This missing information is however crucial, as explained in our last paper … Continue reading
