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Rheology of weakly wetted granular materials - a comparison of experimental and numerical data

Shear cell simulations and experiments of weakly wetted particles (a few volume percent liquid binders) are compared, with the goal to understand their flow rheology. Application examples are cores for metal casting by core shooting made of sand and liquid binding materials. The experiments are carried out with a Couette-like rotating viscometer. The weakly wetted granular materials are made of quartz sand and small amounts of Newtonian liquids. For comparison, experiments on dry sand are also performed with a modified configuration of the viscometer. The numerical model involves spherical, monodisperse particles with contact forces and a simple liquid bridge model for individual capillary bridges between two particles. Different liquid content and properties lead to different flow rheology when measuring the shear stress-strain relations. In the experiments of the weakly wetted granular material, the apparent shear viscosity $η_g$ scales inversely proportional to the inertial number $I$, for all shear rates. On the contrary, in the dry case, an intermediate scaling regime inversely quadratic in $I$ is observed for moderate shear rates. In the simulations, both scaling regimes are found for dry and wet granular material as well.