SOME QUALITATIVE FEATURES OF THE COUETTE-FLOW OF MONODISPERSE, SMOOTH, INELASTIC SPHERICAL-PARTICLES

Computer simulations have been performed to examine the occurrence of power-law correlations for the stresses exerted on the confining walls by the particles in the three dimensional Couette flow of hard, smoot h, dissipative spherical particles of uniform size. At high particle c oncentrations, the wavelet analysis of the wall shear stress has revea led the existence of anomalous, long-ranged temporal correlations. Bas ed on the results obtained, there are indications that the dense Couet te flow of monodisperse, smooth, inelastic, spherical particles is a s ystem which may be characterized by continuous distributions of the ph ysical measures of its particles, such as size. (C) 1997 American Inst itute of Physics. [S0003-6951(97)01952-9].