Granular flow in a silo discharged with a conveyor belt

Abstract By means of an experimental analysis we study the granular flow in a two-dimensional silo discharged through a conveyor belt placed below the outlet. The results exhibit a saturation of the flow rate, W, with the belt velocity, v b . Moreover, we find a dependence of the flow rate and grains velocity on the outlet size D which differs from the purely gravitational regime. To explain it, we propose an analysis based on mass conservation arguments that agrees with the experimental data when v b is sufficiently low. For large values of this variable, it seems to be a smooth transition between a free discharge regime (for small D) and a belt extraction regime (for large D) where the proposed model is also valid. Our analysis provides a useful connection between the flow rate and the exit geometry, a feature that may be very useful from a practical point of view.