A three-dimensional numerical model for dense granular flows based on the μ(I) rheology

This paper presents a three-dimensional implementation of the so-called μ(I) rheology to accurately and efficiently compute steady-state dense granular flows. The tricky pressure dependent visco-plastic behaviour within an incompressible flow solver has been overcome using a regularisation technique along with a complete derivation of the incremental formulation associated with the Newton-Raphson algorithm. The computational accuracy and efficiency of the proposed numerical model have been assessed on two representative problems that have an analytical solution. Then, two application examples dealing with actual lab experiments have also been considered: the first one concerns a granular flow on a heap and the second one deals with the granular flow around a cylinder. In both configurations the obtained computational results are in good agreement with available experimental data.