Shearing flows of frictionless spheres over bumpy planes: slip velocity

Boundary conditions for the slip velocity of inelastic, frictionless spheres interacting with bumpy walls are derived via discrete element method simulations of Couette granular flows. The bumpiness is created by gluing spheres identical to those flowing in a regular hexagonal array to a flat plane. Depending on the particle inelasticity and bumpiness, the characteristics of the flow range from simple shearing to plug flow. At low bumpiness—small distance between the wall-particles—the ratio of particle shear stress to pressure is a non-linear function of the slip velocity and presents a maximum. At high bumpiness, the bumpy plane behaves as a flat, frictional surface and the stress ratio saturates to a constant value for large slip velocity.