When Slower is Faster: Understanding the Striking Clogging of Suspensions Through Constrictions
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When objects are forced to flow through constrictions their transport can be frustrated temporarily or permanently due to the formation of arches in the region of the bottleneck. While such systems have been intensively studied in the case of solid particles in a gas phase being forced by gravitational forces, the case of solid particles suspended in a liquid phase, being forced by the liquid itself, has been so far barely explored. Therefore, the influence of the liquid flow on the transport efficiency is not well understood yet, leading to several apparently trivial, but yet unanswered questions, e.g., would an increase of the liquid flow improve the transport of particles or worsen it? In this work, we will attempt to answer this question both experimentally and numerically.