ABSTRACT
Transport of granular materials are important in many fields and are often cause of problems. One of them is size segregation, which is a non random spatial distribution of the different grains species. A classical example is the “Brazil Nuts segregation” (Rosato et al. 1987). In this article, we focus on the spontaneous interparticle percolation in a granular medium. The spontaneous interparticle percolation phenomenon is defined as the motion of fine particles through an arrangement of larger spheres simply due to gravity. When two grains species are very different in size (with a ratio Dsmall/Dlarge < 0.1547 . . .), it is possible for the smaller to drain totally through the porous medium. During the percolation process, energy is dissipated at the time of frictional and inelastic collisions which ones induce lateral and longitudinal dispersions. This kind of segregation was previously studied by Bridgwater et al. (1969) and more recently by Samson (1997).
