LAUSR

We study the flow of frictional, inelastic dumbbells made of two fused spheres of different aspect ratios down a rough inclined plane and in a simple shear cell, using discrete element simulations. At a fixed inclination angle, the mean velocity decreases, and the volume fraction increases significantly with increasing aspect ratio in the chute flow. At a fixed solid fraction, the shear stress and pressure decrease significantly with increasing aspect ratio in the shear cell flow. The micro-structure of the flow is characterized. The translational diffusion coefficient in the normal direction to the flow is found to scale as Dyy=bγd2, independent of aspect ratio, where b is a constant, γ is the shear rate, and d is the diameter of the constituent spheres of the dumbbells. The effective friction coefficient (μ, the ratio of shear stress to pressure) increases by 30%-35% on increasing the aspect ratio λ, from 1.0 to 1.7, for a fixed inertial number I. The volume fraction (ϕ) also increases significantly w...