Granular Materials Committee

2022 Granular Materials Committee Student Competition Winners

The Granular Materials Committee hosted its first video competition for graduate students to present their research findings in experimental, computational and theoretical studies (students were allowed to submit in one of these categories) within the broad field of granular materials. As nearly every product, commodity, or infrastructure is constituted from, derived from, or supported by particulate materials through mining, agriculture, and/or chemical processing, the competition spans the engineering disciplines, applied mathematics, materials science and physics.  The following winners were selected by a distinguished panel of jurors, from a number of outstanding submissions. 

Abhishek Paul (Computational category)

Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA
Title: “Continuum modeling of corn stover feedstock through a compression feed screw”

Statement from judges:

“The author developed a continuum simulation of the first stage of an industrial process that converts a biomass granular material into bio-ethanol, a stage that, if conducted improperly, results in disruption and downtime. The challenge was to model an apparently discontinuous and fibrous granular material as a continuum so that FEM analyses could be conducted of the continuous-feed process."

Read more

View video presentation

Noor Mili (Computational category)

 

New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, USA

Title: "Computational analysis of tapped density evolution in granular beds”

Statement from judges:

“The author conducted a comprehensive study of a granular bed that is periodically disrupted by regular vertical impulses of the bed's floor. These impulses produce rearrangements of the monodisperse spheres and a continual increase in density."

Read more

View video presentation

Dawa Seo (Experimental category)

 

Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

Title: “Experimental analysis of shape distribution of fragments under particle breakage with 3D X-ray tomography”

Statement from judges:

“The author developed a new experimental approach for identifying the evolution of particle shape during confined compaction.  The author first performed oedometric compression experiments on granular materials with in-situ 3D x-ray tomography measurements. The x-ray tomography measurements, made at varying stress levels during oedometric compression, provided 3D images of grains."

Read more

View video presentation