# Granular Flow, Collisional Cooling and Charged Grains

## Abstract

The non-Newtonian character of granular flow in a vertical pipe is analyzed. The time evolution of the flow velocity and the velocity fluctuations (or granular temperature) is derived. The steady state velocity has a power law dependence on the pipe width with an exponent between $`3/4`$ and $`3/2`$. The flow becomes faster the more efficient the collisional cooling is, provided the density remains low enough. The dependence of collisional cooling on the solid fraction, the restitution coefficient and a possible electric charge of all grains is discussed in detail.

## 1 Introduction

Granular materials like dry sand are classical many particle systems which differ significantly from solids and liquids in their dynamical behavior. They seem to have some properties in common with solids, like the ability of densely packed grains to sustain shear. Other properties, like the ability to flow through a hopper, remind of a fluid. Upon looking more closely, however, it turns out that such similarities are only superficial: Force localization or arching in granular packings and their plastic yield behaviour are distictly different from solids, cluster instabilities and nonlinear internal friction make granular flow very different from that of ordinary, Newtonian fluids. These differences manifest themselves often in extraordinarily strong fluctuations, which may cause accidents, when ignored in technological applications. This is why understanding the statistical physics of granular materials is important and has been very fruitful (see e.g. ). In this paper a few selected examples will be presented, which on the one hand document the progress in understanding brought about by applying concepts from statistical physics, and on the other hand point out some areas where important and difficult questions invite future research.

One of the simplest geometries displaying the non-Newtonian character of granular flow is an evacuated vertical tube through which the grains fall. The experimental investigation is difficult, however, because the flow depends sensitively on electric charging and humidity . Nevertheless the ideal uncharged dry granular medium falling in vacuum through a vertical pipe is an important reference case and a natural starting point for computer simulations.

Using this idealized example we shall show that the properties of granular flow can be explained, if two essential physical ingredients are understood: The interaction of the granular flow with the container walls and the phenomenon of collisional cooling. This technical term draws an analogy between the disordered relative motion of the agitated grains and the thermal motion of gas molecules. In a granular “gas”, differently from a molecular gas, the relative motion of the grains is reduced in every collision due to the irreversible loss of kinetic energy to the internal degrees of freedom of the grains. This is called collisional cooling.

Agitated dry grains are usually electrically charged due to contact electrification. Its effect on the dynamical behavior of granular materials has hardly been studied so far. The reason is certainly not lack of interest, as intentional charging is the basis of several modern applications of granular materials in industrial processes. The reason is that well controlled experiments with electrically charged grains are difficult, as is the theory, because of the long range nature of the Coulomb interaction.

One such application is the electrostatic separation of scrap plastics into the raw materials for recycling. A similar technique is used to separate Potassium salts, a raw material for fertilizers, from rock salt. In a “conditioning process” chemically different grains get charged oppositely. Then they fall through a condenser tower, where they are deflected in opposite directions and hence separated. Such a dry separation has the advantage of avoiding the environmental damage, the old fashioned chemical separation method would cause. Another application is powder varnishing. In order to avoid the harmful fumes of ordinary paints, the dry pigment powder is charged monopolarly and attracted to the grounded piece of metal to be varnished. Once covered with the powder, the metal is heated so that the powder melts and forms a continuous film.

Recently a rather complete understanding has been reached, how monopolar charging affects collisional cooling . However, little is known about the influence of the charges on the grain-wall interaction statistics. The monopolar case is much simpler than the bipolar one: If all grains repell each other, collisional cooling cannot lead to the clustering instability observed for neutral grains . The case, where the grains carry charges of either sign, is much more difficult, because the clustering instability might even be enhanced. It has not been investigated yet.

## 2 Why the laws of Hagen, Poisseuille and Bagnold fail for granular pipe flow

Since the flow through a vertical pipe is such a basic example, it has been addressed many times, including some classical work from the last century. Here we remind the reader of some of the most elementary ideas and results concerning pipe flow, and at the same time show, where they fail. The general situation is much more complex, as we are going to point out in the subsequent sections.

Force balance requires that the divergence of the stress tensor $`\sigma _{ij}`$ compensates the weight per unit volume in the steady state of the flowing material:

$$_x\sigma _{zx}+_z\sigma _{zz}=mgn,$$
(1)   
where $`m`$ denotes the molecular or grain mass, $`n`$ the number density of molecules or grains and $`g`$ the gravitational acceleration. The partial derivative in the vertical (the $`z`$-) direction vanishes because of translational invariance along the pipe. $`_x`$ denotes the partial derivative in the transversal direction.<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1For the sake of transparency the equations are given for the two dimensional case in this section.

In Newtonian or simple liquids the stress tensor is assumed to be proportional to the shear rate

$$\sigma _{zx}=\eta _xv_z.$$
(2)   
The proportionality constant $`\eta `$ is the viscosity. Inserting this into (1) immediately gives the parabolic velocity profile of Hagen-Poisseuille flow, $`v_z=v_{\mathrm{max}}(mgn/2\eta )x^2`$. No-slip boundary conditions then imply that the flow velocity averaged over the cross section of the pipe scales like $`\overline{v}W^2`$.

According to kinetic theory the viscosity $`\eta `$ is proportional to the thermal velocity. In lowest order the thermal motion of liquid molecules is independent of the average flow velocity. It is given by the coupling of the liquid to a heat bath. For a granular gas, the thermal velocity must be replaced by a typical relative velocity $`\delta v`$ of the grains. Due to collisional cooling $`\delta v`$ would drop to zero, if there was no flow. This is the most important difference between liquid and granular flow. It shows, that for a granular gas the collision rate between the grains, and hence the viscosity cannot be regarded as independent of the average flow velocity in lowest order. Bagnold  argued that the typical relative motion should be proportional to the absolute value of the shear rate, $`\eta \delta v|_xv_z|`$, so that

$$\sigma _{zx}|_xv_z|_xv_z.$$
(3)   
Inserting this into (1) leads to the result, that the average flow velocity must scale with the pipe diameter as $`\overline{v}W^{3/2}`$.

However, Bagnold’s argument ignores, that there is a second characteristic velocity in the system, which is $`\sqrt{gd}`$, where $`d`$ is the diameter of the grains. It enters due to the nonlinear coupling between the flow velocity and the irregular grain motion, as we are going to point out in the next section. Hence, for granular flow through a vertical pipe, the viscosity is a function of both the average flow velocity and $`\sqrt{gd}`$. This will change the scaling of $`\overline{v}`$ with the diameter of the pipe, of course.

Very little is known about the flow of dry granular materials at high solid fractions, where the picture of gas-like dynamics, which we employed so far, no longer applies. Hagen studied the discharge from a silo  and postulated, that the flow rate is not limited by plastic deformations inside the packing but by arching at the outlet. He assumes that the only dimensionful relevant parameters for outlets much larger than the grain size are $`g`$ and the width $`W`$ of the outlet, for which we use the same notation as for the pipe diameter. Therefore, he concludes, that up to dimensionless prefactors

$$\overline{v}\sqrt{gW}.$$
(4)   
He confirmed this experimentally for the silo geometry, where the outlet is smaller than the diameter of the container. It is tempting to expect that this holds also for pipe flow at high solid fractions. However, in our computer simulations we never observed such a behaviour, although we studied volume fractions, which were so high, that the addition of a single particle would block the pipe completely. Without investigating dense granular flow any further in this paper, we just want to point out that Hagen’s dimensional argument seems less plausible for a pipe than for a silo, because important arching now occurs at any place simultaneously along the pipe, and the dynamics of decompaction waves  and plastic deformations far from the lower end of the pipe may well depend on the dimensionless ratio $`W/d`$, for instance. This spoils the argument leading to (4), of course.

## 3 General equations of momentum and energy balance

A vertical pipe can be viewed essentially as a one-dimensional system, if one averages all dynamical quantities over the cross section. In the following we derive the time evolution of such cross sectional averages of the velocity and velocity fluctuations, assuming they are constant along the pipe. This assumption ignores the spontaneous formation of density waves, which is legitimate if the pipe is sufficiently short. Then a homogeneous state can be maintained. It needs not be stationary, though, and the equations we shall derive describe its temporal evolution. The physical significance of this study is based on the assumption that short sections of a long pipe are locally homogeneous and close to the corresponding steady state.

The translational invariance along the pipe implies that the average velocity only has an axial component. Its time evolution is given by the competition of a gain term, which is the gravitational acceleration $`g`$, and a loss term due to the momentum transfer to the pipe wall. Here we focus on the behavior at low enough densities, where the dynamics are dominated by collisions rather than frictional contacts. Then the momentum transfer to the pipe wall is proportional to the number of grain-wall collisions, $`\dot{N}_\mathrm{w}`$. In each such collision the axial velocity of the colliding particle changes by an average value $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{v}`$. All grains are assumed to be equal for simplicity. Hence the average axial velocity changes by $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{v}/N`$ in a wall collision. The momentum balance then reads:

$$\dot{\overline{v}}=g\dot{N}_\mathrm{w}\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{v}/N.$$
(5)   
More subtle is the energy balance which gives rise to an equation for the root mean square fluctuation of the velocity, $`\delta v=\sqrt{\stackrel{}{v}^2\stackrel{}{v}^2}`$. This can be regarded as the typical absolute value of relative velocities.

The rates of energy dissipation $`\dot{E}_{\mathrm{diss}}`$ and of change of kinetic and potential energy, $`\dot{E}_{\mathrm{kin}}`$ and $`\dot{E}_{\mathrm{pot}}`$ must add up to zero due to energy conservation,

$$0=\dot{E}_{\mathrm{diss}}+\dot{E}_{\mathrm{kin}}+\dot{E}_{\mathrm{pot}}.$$
(6)   
The change in kinetic energy per unit time is

$$\dot{E}_{\mathrm{kin}}=Nm(\overline{v}\dot{\overline{v}}+\delta v\dot{\delta v}),$$
(7)   
where $`N`$ is the total number of particles in the pipe and $`m`$ their mass. The potential energy (in the absence of Coulomb interactions between the grains) changes at a rate

$$\dot{E}_{\mathrm{pot}}=Nmg\overline{v}.$$
(8)   
If only the irreversible nature of binary grain collisions is taken into account the energy dissipation rate is proportional to the number of binary collisions per unit time, $`\dot{N}_\mathrm{g}`$, times the loss of kinetic energy in the relative motion of the collision partners,

$$\dot{E}_{\mathrm{diss}}=\dot{N}_\mathrm{g}\mathrm{\Delta }E,$$
(9)   
with

$$\mathrm{\Delta }E=\mathrm{\Delta }(m\delta v^2/2)=m\delta v\mathrm{\Delta }(\delta v).$$
(10)   
Solving (6) for $`\dot{\delta v}`$ and replacing $`\dot{\overline{v}}g`$ using (5) gives

$$\dot{\delta v}=(\overline{v}/\delta v)\dot{N}_\mathrm{w}\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{v}/N\dot{N}_\mathrm{g}\mathrm{\Delta }(\delta v)/N.$$
(11)   
As for the average velocity, (5), the typical relative velocity has a gain and a loss term. The gain term has a remarkable symmetry to the loss term in (5), which is completely general. Only the second term in (11) may be different, if additional modes of energy dissipation like collisions with the walls or friction are included. The gain term in (11) subsumes also the production of granular temperature in the interior of the pipe due to the finite shear rate, which is remarkable, as it expresses everything in terms of physics at the wall.

Once the loss terms of the balance equations, (5) and (11), are known, the time evolution of the average velocity and the velocity fluctuations can be calculated, because the gain terms are given. In this sense, it is sufficient to have a statistical description of collisional cooling (which gives the loss term in (11)) and of the momentum transfer of the granular gas to a wall (which gives the loss term in (5)) in order to describe granular flow in a vertical pipe. It turns out, that collisional cooling is easier, because it cannot depend on the average velocity due to the Galilei invariance of the grain-grain-interactions, whereas the momentum transfer to the walls depends on both, $`\overline{v}`$ and $`\delta v`$.

## 4 Collisional cooling

We shall now specify $`\dot{N}_\mathrm{g}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }(\delta v)`$. The time between two subsequent collisions of a particle can be estimated by the mean free path, $`\lambda `$, divided by a typical relative velocity, $`\delta v`$. Hence the number of binary collisions per unit time is proportional to

$$\dot{N}_\mathrm{g}N\delta v/\lambda .$$
(12)   
Here we assumed that the flow is sufficiently homogeneous, that the local variations of $`\lambda `$ and $`\delta v`$ are unimportant.

In each collision the relative normal velocity gets reduced by a factor, the restitution coefficient $`e_\mathrm{n}<1`$. For simplicity we assume that the restitution coefficient is a constant. Correspondingly a fraction of the kinetic energy of relative motion is dissipated in each collision.

$$\mathrm{\Delta }E=(1e_\mathrm{n}^2)\frac{m}{2}\delta v^2$$
(13)   
with the grain mass $`m`$. According to (10) $`\mathrm{\Delta }(\delta v)=(1e_\mathrm{n}^2)\delta v/2`$. Putting this together, the dissipation rate (9) is 

$$\dot{E}_{\mathrm{diss}}=k_\mathrm{g}N\frac{m}{d}\delta v^3.$$
(14)   
The dimensionless proportionality constant $`k_\mathrm{g}`$ contains the dependence on the solid fraction $`\nu d/\lambda `$ and the restitution coefficient $`e_\mathrm{n}`$ and can be calculated analytically, if one assumes that the probability distribution of the particles is Gaussian .

From these considerations one can draw a very general conclusion for the steady state values of $`\overline{v}`$ and $`\delta v`$. In the steady state the kinetic energy is constant, so that (6) together with (8) and (14) implies

$$\frac{\overline{v}_\mathrm{s}}{\delta v_\mathrm{s}^3}=\frac{k_\mathrm{g}}{gd}$$
(15)   
Whenever the dissipation is dominated by irreversible binary collisions and the flow is sufficiently homogeneous, the steady flow velocity in a vertical pipe should be proportional to the velocity fluctuation to the power $`3/2`$. The proportionality constant does not depend on the width of the pipe.

We tested this relation by two dimensional event driven molecular dynamics simulations . The agreement is surprisingly good, given the simple arguments above, even quantitatively. However, it turns out that the proportionality constant in (15) has a weak dependence on the width of the pipe, which can be traced back to deviations of the velocity distribution from an isotropic Gaussian: The vertical velocity component has a skewed distribution with enhanced tail towards zero velocity .

## 5 Interaction of the granular flow with the wall

The collision rate $`\dot{N}_\mathrm{w}`$ with the walls of the vertical pipe can be determined by noting that the number of particles colliding with a unit area of the wall per unit time for low density $`n`$ is given by $`|v_{}|n`$. As the typical velocity perpendicular to the pipe wall, $`|v_{}|`$ is proportional to $`\delta v`$, one obtains

$$\dot{N}_\mathrm{w}N\delta v/W.$$
(16)   
This is the place where the pipe width $`W`$ enters into the flow dynamics.

To specify, by how much the vertical velocity of a grain changes on average, when it collides with the wall, is much more difficult, as it depends on the local geometry of the wall. In our simulations the wall consisted of a dense array of circular particles of equal size. When a grain is reflected from such a wall particle, a fraction of the vertical component of its velocity will be reversed. Instead of averaging this over all collision geometries, we give some general arguments narrowing down the possible functional form of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{v}`$. If we assume that the velocity distribution is Gaussian, all moments of any velocity component must be functions of $`\overline{v}`$ and $`\delta v`$. This must be true for $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{v}`$, as well. For dimensional reasons it must be of the form

$$\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{v}=\overline{v}f\left(\frac{\delta v}{\overline{v}}\right)$$
(17)   
with a dimensionless function $`f`$. The physical interpretation of this is the following: The loss term in the momentum balance can be viewed as an effective wall friction. As long as the granular flow in the vertical pipe approaches a steady state, the friction force must depend on the velocity $`\overline{v}`$. The ratio $`\delta v/\overline{v}`$ can be viewed as a characteristic impact angle, so that the function $`f`$ contains the information about the average local collision geometry at the wall. In principle all dimensionless parameters characterizing the system may enter the funcion $`f`$, that is, apart from $`\nu `$ also the restitution coefficient $`e_\mathrm{n}`$ and the ratios $`W/d`$ and $`gd/\overline{v}^2`$. However, it is hard to imagine, that the width $`W`$ of the pipe or the gravitational acceleration $`g`$ influences the local collision geometry. Therefore we shall assume that $`f`$ does not depend on $`W/d`$ or $`gd/\overline{v}^2`$. On the other hand, it is plausible, that the restitution coefficient enters $`f`$. It will influence the spatial distribution of particles and also accounts for the correlation of the velocities, if some particle is scattered back and forth between the wall and neighboring particles inside the pipe, and hence hits the wall twice or more times without a real randomization of its velocity. Due to positional correlations among the particles, $`f`$ should also depend on the solid fraction $`\nu `$: One can easily imagine, that the average collision geometry is different in dense and in dilute systems.

Lacking a more precise understanding of the function $`f`$ we make a simple power law ansatz for it and write the loss term of (5) as

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\dot{N}_\mathrm{w}}{N}}\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{v}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{W}}\delta v\overline{v}k_\mathrm{w}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\delta v}{\overline{v}}}\right)^\beta `$ (18)   
$`=`$ $`k_\mathrm{w}W^1\delta v^{1+\beta }\overline{v}^{1\beta }.`$   
The dimensionless parameters $`k_\mathrm{w}`$ and $`\beta `$ will be functions of $`\nu `$ and $`e_\mathrm{n}`$.

## 6 Time evolution and steady state

With these assumptions, the equations of motion (5) and (11) for granular flow through a vertical pipe become

$`\dot{\overline{v}}`$ $`=`$ $`gk_\mathrm{w}W^1\delta v^{1+\beta }\overline{v}^{1\beta },`$ (19)   
$`\dot{\delta v}`$ $`=`$ $`k_\mathrm{w}W^1\delta v^\beta \overline{v}^{2\beta }k_\mathrm{g}d^1\delta v^2.`$ (20)   
As the time evolution should not be singular for $`\overline{v}=0`$ or $`\delta v=0`$, the values of $`\beta `$ are restricted to the interval

$$0\beta 1.$$
(21)   
The meaning of the exponent $`\beta `$ becomes clear, if we calculate the steady state velocity from (19) and (15). The result is

$$\overline{v}_\mathrm{s}=\sqrt{gd}k_\mathrm{g}^{\gamma 1/2}k_\mathrm{w}^\gamma \left(\frac{W}{d}\right)^\gamma .$$
(22)   
The exponent $`\gamma `$, which determines the dependence of the average flow velocity on the pipe diameter, is related to $`\beta `$ by

$$\gamma =\frac{3}{2(2\beta )}.$$
(23)   
Due to (21) we predict that in granular pipe flow

$$3/4\gamma 3/2,$$
(24)   
as long as the flow is sufficiently homogeneous and the main dissipation mechanism are binary collisions. Note, that the exponent is always smaller than 2, which would be its value for Hagen-Poisseuille flow of a Newtonian fluid. $`\gamma =3/2`$ is the prediction of Bagnold’s theory, but in our simulations we found also values as small as 1, depending on the values of the solid fraction and the restitution coefficient .

The stationary value $`\delta v_\mathrm{s}`$ directly follows from (22) and (15). One obtains the same formula as (22) with $`\gamma `$ replaced by $`\gamma /3`$.

## 7 Collisional cooling for monopolar charged grains

In this section we summarize our recent results , how the dissipation rate (14) is changed if all grains carry the same electrical charge $`q`$ (besides having the same mass $`m`$, radius $`r`$ and restitution coefficient $`e_\mathrm{n}`$). For simplicity we assume that the charges are located in the middle of the insulating particles. The results are valid for grains in a three dimensional space, $`D=3`$.

Whereas the hard sphere gas has no characteristic energy scale, the Coulomb repulsion introduces such a scale,

$$E_\mathrm{q}=q^2/d.$$
(25)   
It is the energy barrier that two collision partners have to overcome, when approaching each other from infinity. It has to be compared to the typical kinetic energy stored in the relative motion of the particles, which by analogy with molecular gases is usually expressed in terms of the “granular temperature”

$$T=\delta v^2/D.$$
(26)   
If $`E_\mathrm{q}mT`$ one expects that the charges have negligible effect on the dissipation rate.

Using (26) and the expression

$$\nu =\frac{\pi }{6}nd^3\mathrm{with}n=N/V$$
(27)   
for the three dimensional solid fraction, the dissipation rate (14) can be written in the form

$$\dot{E}_{\mathrm{diss}}/V=kn^2d^2mT^{3/2}$$
(28)   
with the dimensionless prefactor

$$k=k_\mathrm{g}\pi \sqrt{3}/2\nu .$$
(29)   
The advantage of writing it this way is that the leading $`n`$\- or $`\nu `$-dependence is explicitely given: In the dilute limit $`\nu 0`$ the dissipation rate should be proportional to $`n^2`$, i.e. to the probability that two particles meet in an ideal gas.

Since the remaining factors in (28) are uniquely determined by the dimension of the dissipation rate, this equation must hold for charged particles as well. However, in this case the prefactor $`k`$ will not only depend on $`e_\mathrm{n}`$ and $`\nu `$, but also on the dimensionless energy ratio $`E_\mathrm{q}/mT`$. We found  that the following factorization holds

$$k=k_0(e_\mathrm{n})g_{\mathrm{chs}}(\nu ,E_\mathrm{q}/mT),$$
(30)   
where

$$k_0=2\sqrt{\pi }(1e_\mathrm{n}^2)$$
(31)   
is the value of $`k`$ for $`\nu =E_\mathrm{q}/mT=0`$. $`g_{\mathrm{chs}}`$ denotes the radial distribution function for charged hard spheres (chs) at contact, normalized by the one for the uncharged ideal gas.

For $`\nu <0.2`$ and $`E_\mathrm{q}/mT<8`$ our computer simulations show that

$$g_{\mathrm{chs}}(\nu ,\frac{E_\mathrm{q}}{mT})g_{\mathrm{hs}}(\nu )\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{E_\mathrm{q}}{mT}f(\nu )\right)$$
(32)   
is a very good approximation. Here,

$$g_{\mathrm{hs}}=\frac{2\nu }{2(1\nu )^3}1$$
(33)   
is the well-known Enskog correction for the radial distribution function of (uncharged) hard spheres (hs) . This factor describes that the probability that two particles collide is enhanced due to the excluded volume of all the remaining particles. The second, Boltzmann-like factor describes that the Coulomb repulsion suppresses collisions. The effective energy barrier $`E_\mathrm{q}f(\nu )`$ decreases with increasing solid fraction, because two particles which are about to collide not only repel each other but are also pushed together by being repelled from all the other charged particles in the system. A two parameter fit gives

$$f(\nu )1c_0\nu ^{1/3}+c_1\nu ^{2/3}$$
(34)   
with

$$c_0=2.40\pm 0.15,\mathrm{and}c_1=1.44\pm 0.15.$$
(35)   
Very general arguments  lead to the prediction that $`c_1=(c_0/2)^2`$, which is confirmed by (35).

We expect deviations from (32) for larger $`\nu `$ and $`E_\mathrm{q}/mT`$, because the uncharged hard sphere system has a fluid-solid transition close to $`\nu 0.5`$, and the charged system may become a Wigner crystal for any solid fraction, provided the temperature gets low enough.

## 8 Conclusion

We presented four main results: The steady state velocity of granular flow in a vertical pipe should have a power law dependence on the diameter $`W`$ of the pipe with an exponent $`\gamma `$ ranging between 3/4 and 3/2, depending on the solid fraction and the restitution coefficient of the grains. This result was derived ignoring possible electric charges of the grains and assuming that the flow is sufficiently homogeneous and the main dissipation mechanism are binary collisions. This illustrates the genuinely non-Newtonian character of granular flow.

Second, the dependence of the steady state velocity on the solid fraction $`\nu `$, the restitution coefficient $`e_\mathrm{n}`$ and – in the case of monopolar charging – the ratio between Coulomb barrier and kinetic energy, $`E_\mathrm{q}/mT`$, is contained in the factor $`k_\mathrm{g}^{\gamma 1/2}k_\mathrm{w}^\gamma `$ in (22). In the dilute limit $`\nu 0`$ as well as in the limit of nearly elastic particles $`e_\mathrm{n}1`$ the coefficient $`k_\mathrm{w}`$, which describes how sensitive the momentum transfer to the wall depends on the local collision geometry, should remain finite, whereas $`k_\mathrm{g}`$ vanishes like $`\nu (1e_\mathrm{n}^2)`$ according to (29), (31). As $`\gamma 1/2>0`$, this implies that the flow through a vertical pipe becomes faster the higher the solid fraction and the less elastic the collisions between the grains are (in the limit of low density and nearly elastic collisions). The physical reason for this is that in denser and more dissipative systems collisional cooling is more efficient, reducing the collisions with the walls and hence their braking effect. This remarkable behaviour has been confirmed in computer simulations .

Third, monopolar charging leads to a Boltzmann-like factor in $`k_\mathrm{g}`$ or the dissipation rate, respectively, which means that for low granular temperature the dissipation rate becomes exponentially weak. The higher the density the less pronounced is this effect, because the effective Coulomb barrier $`E_\mathrm{q}f(\nu )`$ hindering the collisions becomes weaker.

Finally, we derived the evolution equations for the flow velocity and the velocity fluctuation for granular flow through a vertical pipe, (19) and (20). These equations apply to the situation of homogeneous flow, which can only be realized in computer simulations of a sufficiently short pipe with periodic boundary conditions. In order to generalize these equations for flow that is inhomogeneous along the pipe one should replace the time derivatives by $`_t+\overline{v}(z,t)_z`$. In addition a third equation, the continuity equation, is needed to describe the time evolution of the density of grains along the pipe. Such equations have been proposed previously  in order to study the kinetic waves spontaneously forming in granular pipe flow. Our equations are different.

## Acknowledgements

We thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for supporting this research through grant no. Wo 577/1-3. The computer simulations supporting the theory presented in this paper were partly done at the John von Neumann-Institut für Computing (NIC) in Jülich.