Theoretical and experimental models of pedestrian flux in highly concentrated places and panic situations have shown that a properly located obstacle in from of the exits could actually increase the evacuation velocity. Analogous experiences made with glass grains flowing out of a bi-dimensional rectangular silo also found that a circular disc obstacle close to the exit hole could facilitate the draining of the grains. In this work we develop a relatively simple tri-dimensional version of the problem above. We studied the flow of rice grains out of a cylinder with a hole at the bottom and a vertical barrier that divide equally the grains inside. For a given diameter (D) of the hole at the bottom of the cylinder we repeated the measurements with different thicknesses (b) and different initial heights (h) of the barrier. Our measurements confirmed that there is an optimal b and h that maximize the evacuation speed of the grains. On the other hand, an increase in D always produced and increase in the exit velocity of the grains. All results can be easily replicated in the classroom.
dynamic properties; granular materials
