Measurements of the velocity distribution for granular flow in a Couette cell

In this paper, magnetic resonance velocimetry is used to measure the spatially resolved velocity and velocity fluctuations for granular flow in a Couette cell for four different particle sizes. The largest particles studied (d(p) = 1.7 mm) showed significant slip at the inner wall. The remaining particles showed no slip and all exhibit the same behavior in the profiles of the mean velocity and variance of velocity. The measurements demonstrate that the velocity and variance in velocity scale with the inner wall velocity U; the variance does not scale with U-2. The experimental data were compared with a kinetic theory based model of granular flow and a hydrodynamic model. It was found that the shear rate scales with an exponent of 1.5-2.0 with respect to the velocity fluctuations root < u(y)(2)>, compared with the value of 1.0 expected from kinetic theory. The difference in the exponent is consistent with the effect of collective dynamics as described by the hydrodynamic model.