Diffusion compaction coupling controls pore pressure dynamics in granular fluid flows

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Breard, Eric C. P., Parra, Claudia Elijas, Vitturi, Mattia de' Michieli
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
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author Breard, Eric C. P.
Parra, Claudia Elijas
Vitturi, Mattia de' Michieli
author_facet Breard, Eric C. P.
Parra, Claudia Elijas
Vitturi, Mattia de' Michieli
contents Excess pore pressure in granular--fluid mixtures can transiently suppress frictional contacts and dramatically enhance flow mobility, yet its evolution is commonly modeled using constant effective diffusivities. Here we show that the apparent diffusivity is not intrinsic but emerges from the coupling between pore-pressure diffusion and granular compaction. Starting from two-phase mass conservation for a deformable, gas-saturated granular assembly, we derive an evolution equation for excess pore pressure that captures deformation of the granular skeleton. In the thin-flow, small-excess-pressure limit, this reduces to a one-dimensional diffusion--compaction equation with a time-dependent source term controlled by porosity changes. A modal analysis yields a reduced basal equation that separates diffusive drainage from compaction-driven forcing and identifies the corresponding timescales. This framework introduces a dimensionless source-to-diffusion ratio, $Ψ_0$, which governs the competition between these processes and collapses effective diffusivities obtained from high-resolution two-fluid simulations over nearly two orders of magnitude in bed height. This scaling implies that the apparent diffusivity, and thus flow mobility, is not intrinsic but depends on flow thickness through the competition between diffusion and compaction. Incorporating this physics into a depth-averaged model demonstrates that the resulting closure reproduces the thickness dependence of pore-pressure decay and runout observed in experiments. These results provide a physically grounded description of pore-pressure evolution in granular--fluid flows and clarify how diffusion--compaction coupling controls their mobility.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_18462
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Diffusion compaction coupling controls pore pressure dynamics in granular fluid flows
Breard, Eric C. P.
Parra, Claudia Elijas
Vitturi, Mattia de' Michieli
Soft Condensed Matter
Fluid Dynamics
Excess pore pressure in granular--fluid mixtures can transiently suppress frictional contacts and dramatically enhance flow mobility, yet its evolution is commonly modeled using constant effective diffusivities. Here we show that the apparent diffusivity is not intrinsic but emerges from the coupling between pore-pressure diffusion and granular compaction. Starting from two-phase mass conservation for a deformable, gas-saturated granular assembly, we derive an evolution equation for excess pore pressure that captures deformation of the granular skeleton. In the thin-flow, small-excess-pressure limit, this reduces to a one-dimensional diffusion--compaction equation with a time-dependent source term controlled by porosity changes. A modal analysis yields a reduced basal equation that separates diffusive drainage from compaction-driven forcing and identifies the corresponding timescales. This framework introduces a dimensionless source-to-diffusion ratio, $Ψ_0$, which governs the competition between these processes and collapses effective diffusivities obtained from high-resolution two-fluid simulations over nearly two orders of magnitude in bed height. This scaling implies that the apparent diffusivity, and thus flow mobility, is not intrinsic but depends on flow thickness through the competition between diffusion and compaction. Incorporating this physics into a depth-averaged model demonstrates that the resulting closure reproduces the thickness dependence of pore-pressure decay and runout observed in experiments. These results provide a physically grounded description of pore-pressure evolution in granular--fluid flows and clarify how diffusion--compaction coupling controls their mobility.
title Diffusion compaction coupling controls pore pressure dynamics in granular fluid flows
topic Soft Condensed Matter
Fluid Dynamics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.18462