An Interdisciplinary Summer School will take place at the University of Maryland College Park June 13-17 2011 entitled "Granular Flows - From Simulations to Astrophysical Applications". The aim is to bring together experts and students from both granular physics and astrophysics and focus on state-of-the-art experimental and simulation approaches for granular flows that are emerging in both physics and astrophysics. Granular flows are encountered in a wide range of astrophysical applications from asteroids to planetary rock avalanches. Our knowledge about these flows is exploding due to recent and planned robotic missions to various asteroids, comets, and other planetary bodies. The trove of data is being analyzed now, with patterns of granular arrangements and samples of granular materials returning for analysis. At the same time, significant progress has been made over the last two decades to elucidate the physics of granular flows, from the description of the jamming transition, to analysis of segregation and 3-D flows. For basic physics of granular flows, these new observations offer an unprecedented opportunity to apply the knowledge gained in the last decades on granular flows, and to expand the test of models into a regime of varying gravity, in particular the very low gravity of asteroids. The school will include hands-on components where students will learn how to simulate granular flows and how to evaluate results from flow simulations critically. Corey O?Hern (Yale University) and Derek Richardson (UMD) will lead hands-on afternoon training sessions for students on direct numerical simulations. In addition, experts in experimental studies of dense granular flows will train students in experimental measurements of granular flow fields and forces.
The International Summer School on Granular Flows: From Simulations to Astrophysical Applications was held at the University of Maryland Center of Scientific Computation and Applied Mathematical Modeling (CSCAMM) from June 13 – June 17. It was organized by Wolfgang Losert (Physics) and Derek Richardson (Astronomy) together with Eitan Tadmore of CSCAMM as part of a joint effort between the Interdisciplinary Fluid Dynamics Burgers Program and CSCAMM at the University of Maryland College Park. Intellectual Merit: Granular materials are encountered in a wide range of astrophysical situations from asteroids to rock avalanches on planets. The summer school brought together experts and students from astrophysics and granular physics to discuss a common approach to analyze flow of granular materials in these two fields, and to train the next generation of scientists in this interdisciplinary endeavor. The summer school format included lectures, poster presentations by student participants, as well as hands-on simulation sessions in computer labs on the campus of the University of Maryland College Park. During the meeting, experts and students exchanged their expertise on the data analysis and simulation approaches that are emerging in the two fields. We are aware of at least 2 publications acknowledging collaborative work performed at the summer school. Broader Impact: The program has been made available broadly through a variety of mechanisms. First, the program was webcast live for the duration of the meeting. In addition, an archive of abstracts and talk slides continues to be available from the CSCAMM website for the summer school: http://www2.cscamm.umd.edu/programs/grf11/
