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The flow threshold in dense granular materials is typically modeled by local, stress-based criteria. However, grain-scale cooperativity leads to size effects that cannot be captured with local conditions. In a widely studied example, flows of thin layers of grains down an inclined surface exhibit a size effect whereby thinner layers require more tilt to flow. In this paper, we consider the question of whether the size-dependence of the flow threshold observed in inclined plane flow is configurationally general. Specifically, we consider three different examples of inhomogeneous flow – planar shear flow with gravity, annular shear flow, and vertical chute flow – using two-dimensional discrete-element method calculations and show that the flow threshold is indeed size-dependent in these flow configurations, displaying additional strengthening as the system size is reduced. We then show that the nonlocal granular fluidity model – a nonlocal continuum model for dense granular flow – is capable of quantitatively capturing the observed size-dependent strengthening in all three flow configurations. 

Dense granular heap flows are common in nature, such as during avalanches and landslides, as well as in industrial flows. In granular heap flows, rapid flow is localized near the free surface with the thickness of the rapidly flowing layer dependent on the overall flow rate. In the region deep beneath the surface, exponentially decaying creeping flow dominates with characteristic decay length depending only on the geometry and not the overall flow rate. Existing continuum models for dense granular flow based upon local constitutive equations are not able to simultaneously predict both of these experimentally observed features – failing to even predict the existence of creeping flow beneath the surface. In this work, we apply a scale-dependent continuum approach – the non-local granular fluidity model – to steady, dense granular flows on a heap between two smooth, frictional side walls. We show that the model captures the salient features of both the flow-rate-dependent, rapidly flowing surface layer and the flow-rate-independent, slowly creeping bulk under steady flow conditions.