On the computation of steady hopper flows I. Stress determination for Coulomb materials

The problem of determining the steady stare flow of granular materials in s ilos under the action of gravity is considered. In the case of Mohr-Coulomb materials, the stress equations correspond to a system of hyperbolic conse rvation laws with source terms and boundary conditions. A higher order disc ontinuous Galerkin method is proposed and implemented for the numerical res olution of those equations. The efficiency of the approach is illustrated b y the computation of the stress fields induced in silos with sharp changes of the wall angle. (C) 2001 Academic Press.