SCALING PROPERTY OF THE DILUTE-DENSE TRANSITION IN 2D GRANULAR FLOWS
In this paper we report our experimental study of dilute-dense transition in a 2-dimensional granular flow of particle size d0 and channel width D with confined exit of width d. It is found that a maximum inflow rate Qc exists, above which the outflow changes from dilute to dense and the outflow rate Q(t) drops abruptly from Qc to a dense flow rate Qd. The re-scaled critical rate qc(≡Qc/(D/d0)) is found to be a function of a scaling variable λ only, i.e. qc~F(λ), and [Formula: see text]. The form of this new variable λ suggests that the dilute-to-dense transition is a global property of the flow; unlike the jamming transition, which depends only on [Formula: see text]. It is also found that this transition occurs when the area fraction of particles near the exit reaches a critical value 0.65±0.03.