| Particles and suspensions of particles in fluids are regularly used in many engineering disciplines such as catalysis and reaction engineering, environmental engineering, pharmaceutical engineering, etc. A few issues that are commonly encountered include ensuring homogeneity in pharmaceutical suspensions, predicting particle transport in atmospheric and effluent streams, and manufacturing uniform composite materials. Yet the fundamental study of particle motions in granular media or in highly concentrated granular suspensions has received little attention. Relevant issues of research interest include development of adaptive models that permit wide ranges of particle concentrations, improvement of analyses that allow physical interpretation of particle motions in any medium, of scales ranging from particle size to system size, and accurate validation of theoretical with experimental data.; Given the above shortcomings, this dissertation will focus on investigating basic transport behavior of particles in fluids and developing predictive models for granular media and granular suspensions. Emphasis will be given to combining experiments with computations through examples of pattern forming phenomena in a granular medium and a dense granular-fluid system. The background motivation and the objectives of this dissertation are stated in the opening chapter 1. The next three chapters address these objectives in detail. First, chapter 2 presents experimental evidence, descriptions, and characteristics of novel patterns in a dense granular suspension. This is followed by chapter 3 in which a mean-field continuum model is derived to further elucidate the reported patterning phenomena. Chapter 4 uncovers several novel granular patterns experimentally and is concluded with a coarse-grained phenomenological model for granular surface flows. Lastly, chapter 5 closes the dissertation with conclusions and possible future directions.; This work provides additional understanding and prediction of coexisting static (solid-like) and flowing (liquid-like) regions that are ubiquitous in granular flows. The mechanism of how the solid-like region differs from the fluid-like region will provide guidance for predicting related issues such as segregation and mixing of granular media, sedimentation and surface morphologies in multiphase flows and in nature. |
