Designing non-segregating granular mixtures

In dense flowing bidisperse particle mixtures varying in size or density alone, large particles rise (driven by percolation) and heavy particles sink (driven by buoyancy). When the two particle species differ from each other in both size and density, the two segregation mechanisms either enhance (large/light and small/heavy) or oppose (large/heavy and small/light) each other. In the latter case, an equilibrium condition exists in which the two mechanisms balance and the particles no longer segregate. This leads to a methodology to design non-segregating particle mixtures by specifying particle size ratio, density ratio, and mixture concentration to achieve the equilibrium condition. Using DEM simulations of quasi-2D bounded heap flow, we show that segregation is significantly reduced for particle mixtures near the equilibrium condition. In addition, the rise-sink transition for a range of particle size and density ratios matches the predictions of the combined size and density segregation model.