Effect of impact energy on the shape of granular heaps

Abstract

We study experimentally the shape of a granular heap formed pouring a granular material into a vertical Hele-Shaw cell and analyze the effect of the grain impact energy. We propose a continuous model for the steady profile of the heap that explicitly considers energy dissipation of flowing grains through inelastic collisions. We solve the model analytically and analyze the resulting height profile as a function of several parameters, such as the restitution coefficient of the grains and their impact energies. We find good agreement between theory and experiments.