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Maximum angle of stability of a wet granular pile

Nature Physics volume 1, pages 50–52 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

Anyone who has built a sandcastle recognizes that adding liquid to the sand grains increases the overall stability. However, measurements of the stability in wet granular materials often conflict with theory and with each other1,2,3,4,5,6,7. The friction-based Mohr–Coulomb model3,8 distinguishes between granular friction and interparticle friction, but uses the former without providing a physical mechanism. A frictionless model for the geometric stability of dry particles on the surface of a pile2 is in excellent agreement with experiment. However, the same model applied to wet grains overestimates the stability and predicts no dependence on system size. Here we take a frictionless liquid-bridge model and perform a stability analysis within the pile. We reproduce our experimentally observed dependence of the stability angle on system size, particle size and surface tension. Furthermore, we account for past discrepancies in experimental reports by showing that sidewalls can significantly increase the stability of granular material.

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Figure 1: Avalanching regimes.
Figure 2: Impact of liquid volume fraction and drum width on stability.
Figure 3: The liquid-bridge model.
Figure 4: Comparison of the measured data with the liquid-bridge model.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. Norton and N. Israeloff for their help with the apparatus, and J. Bico for feedback on the manuscript. The work was supported by the National Science Foundation Grant No. DMR-9983659, and the GLUE program of the Department of Energy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA

    Sarah Nowak & Azadeh Samadani

  2. Department of Physics, Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts 01610, USA

    Azadeh Samadani & Arshad Kudrolli

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  1. Sarah Nowak
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  2. Azadeh Samadani
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Correspondence to Arshad Kudrolli.

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Nowak, S., Samadani, A. & Kudrolli, A. Maximum angle of stability of a wet granular pile. Nature Phys 1, 50–52 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys106

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