On the computation of steady hopper flows I: stress determination for Coulomb materials

The problem of determining the steady state flow of granular materials in silos under the action of gravity is considered. In the case of a Mohr-Coulomb material, the stress equations correspond to a system of hyperbolic conservation laws with source terms and boundary conditions. A higher order Discontinuous Galerkin method is proposed and implemented for the numerical resolution of those equations. The efficiency of the approach is illustrated by the computation of the stress fields induced in silos with sharp changes of the wall angle.