The granular matter is the second most handled material by man after water and is thus ubiquitous in daily life and industry only after water. Since the eighteenth century, mechanical and chemical engineers have been striving to manage the many difficulties of grain handling, most of which are related to flow problems. Many continuum models for dense granular flow have been proposed. Herein, we investigated Mohr-Coulomb failure analysis as it has been the cornerstone of stress distribution studies in industrial applications for decades. These datasets gather over 120 granular materials from several industrial sectors, as varied as cement and flour, including raw materials, food, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics. A phenomenological law derived from the yield locus and governed exclusively by one dimensionless number from adhesive interactions has been found using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Surprisingly, and in contrast to the common perception, flow in the quasi-static regime is actually independent of the friction, the packing fraction and any other grains/bulk intrinsic properties. The simplicity and accuracy of the model are remarkable in light of the complex constitutive properties of granular matter.

Manuscript under revision in Advanced Powder Technology

dataGM: Description of the samples used to construct all datasets. Some of the materials are submitted to confidential agreements. In these cases, some or no information has been provided. dataset 1: Principal component Analysis (PCA) data, allowing to generate figures 3 and 4. dataset 2: Principal component Analysis (PCA) data, allowing to generate figure 5 publication. dataset 3: Principal component Analysis (PCA) data, allowing to generate figure 6 publication.