Statistics of jamming in the discharge of a 2-D Silo

Abstract

Jamming and avalanche statistics are studied in a simulation of the discharge of a polydisperse ensemble of disks from a 2-D silo. Exponential distributions are found for the avalanche sizes for all sizes of the exit opening, in agreement with reported experiments. The average avalanche size grows quite fast with the size of the exit opening. Data for this growth agree better with a critical divergence with a large critical exponent, as reported for 3-D experiments, than with the exponential growth reported for 2-D experiments.