November 2018, 20:75 | Cite as

Stability of granular tunnel

Original Paper

We demonstrated that the stability of tunnels made of granular matter is strongly dependent on the grain size, tunnel diameter, and water content inside the granules. Larger tunnel radius, larger grain size, and too much water content tend to destabilize the tunnel. We also developed a model to describe such findings. We identified a phase diagram of stability which is significantly controlled by the granular bond order. For granular bond order of above unity, we always able to build a stable tunnel. For granular bond order of less than unity, we obtained a general expression for estimating the maximum thickness of the stable tunnel. The phenomena related to granular tunnel stability have occurred in human activities (such as a collapse of the sand hole made on the beach) as well as in living animals (such as burrows dug by crabs, antlions, mongoose, beetles, turtles, or some species of rats). To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first exploration regarding the stability of the granular tunnel.

Granular tunnel Granular bond order Tunnel stability Phase diagram

This article is original. The corresponding author confirms that all of the other authors have read and approved the manuscript and no conflict of interest involved.

© Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018

Yuliza, E., Amalia, N., Rahmayanti, H.D. et al. Granular Matter (2018) 20: 75. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10035-018-0847-5
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