Relationship between the Angle of Repose and Angle of Internal Friction for Agricultural Granular Materials

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Date

1998

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Abstract

The angles of repose and internal friction are important parameters which determine the flow characteristics of agricultural granular materials, such as flour, maize, beans, wheat, sorghum and rice. The angles have a big influence on the design offlow and storage structures of agricultural materials such as hoppers, silos, bunkers and bins because they determine whether the flow will be smooth or not, and whether the bursting forces in relation to vertical forces will be great or not. An apparatus for determination of the angle of repose was specifically designed for the purpose. The a'ngles of repose for three different grains, namely maize, sorghulll and rice at four moisture content levels, namely 10, 15, 20 and 25%wb were determined using the designed apparatus. A tri-axial compression machine was used to determine the angles of internal friction for the same grains and same moisture contents. The data obtained were fed into SAS statistical software for step-wise regression analysis. A model of the form <t> r = 22.35 + 0.013<1> 2; + 0.019[MC] 2 where <l>r = the angle of repose, <I> 1 = angle of intemlilfriction and MC = percent moisture content on wet basis was established, and used to predict the angleofreposefor the tested grains ~ith high accuracy (R2 = 0.97). It was concluded that the angle of repose was consistently higher than the angle of internal friction for all the granular materials tested, and the angle of internal friction was highest for maize, followed by rice and finally sorghum.

Description

Tanzania Journal o Agriculture Science 1998, Vol. 1(2): pp 187-194

Keywords

Angle of repose, Angle of internal friction, Granular materials, Triaxial compression machine, Moisture content

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