On the development and challenges of particulate flow modeling in geotechnical engineering: A review

ABSTRACT: Flow of combined granular media and fluids is relevant to many industrial applications and natural phenomena, yet, not fully understood. Particulate flow modeling has significantly developed over the past few decades aided by rapid advances in computational resources. This development is mostly in the chemical engineering field, while contributions to geotechnical engineering are still limited. One of the major reasons for such limited contribution is the large-scale nature of geotechnical structures such as earth dams, which is challenging to model given the available computational resources. In this paper, we aim to present a multidisciplinary summary of the existing approaches, modeling tools and outstanding challenges of particulate flow modeling with a focus on geotechnical applications.