Influence of pore fluid on grain-scale interactions and mobility of
granular flows of differing volume
Abstract
The presence of a pore fluid is recognized to significantly increase the
mobility of saturated over dry granular flows. However, experimental
studies in which both the bulk-scale (runout) and grain-scale behaviour
of identical granular material in a dry and saturated initial state are
directly compared are rare. Further, the mechanisms through which pore
fluid increases mobility may not be captured in experimental flows of
small volume typical of laboratory conditions. Here we present the
results of dry and initially fluid saturated or ‘wet’ experimental flows
in a large laboratory flume for five source volumes of 0.2 to cubic
metre. Our results demonstrate that the striking differences in the
nature of interactions at the particle scale between wet and dry flows
can be directly linked to macro-scale behaviour: in particular, a
greatly increased mobility for wet granular flows compared to dry, and a
significant influence of scale as controlled by source volume. This
dataset provides valuable test scenarios to explore the fundamental
mechanisms through which the presence of a pore fluid increases flow
mobility by first constraining the frictional properties of the material
(dry experiments), permitting an independent evaluation of the
implementation of interstitial fluid effects in numerical runout models
(wet experiments).