Two problems on driven granular matter: poiseuille and taylor-couette flows

Abstract

This dissertation describes the physics of granular particles in two different flow configuration: Poiseuille and Taylor-Couette. In the first part, smooth inelastic disks are allowed to flow under the effect of gravity in a two-dimensional channel. The particles are modeled as inelastic hard particles which interact through binary collisions using event-driven molecular dynamics simulations. In the second part, the particles are allowed to rotate in a cylindrical geometry confined in the annular region between two cylinders, dubbed Taylor-Couette (TC) flow, with inner cylinder rotating with different rotation rates in the absence of gravity.