Swelling granular media can experience size-induced percolation
phenomena giving rise to segregation. In this work, the Discrete Element
Method is employed to investigate the effects of size ratio and swelling
kinetics on the segregation. The numerical analysis was carried out on a
binary mixture consisting of coarse and fine particles and several
mixing indices found in literature were adapted and tested for
evaluating the mixing of expanding systems. Additionally, a relative
percolation velocity was employed to quantify the percolation of fine
particles. The results show that the percolation of fine particles
becomes more significant as the size ratio increases. Additionally,
results showed that the swelling kinetics has no impact on the
segregation tendency. This research provides valuable insight into the
effect of size ratio and swelling kinetics on the segregation behaviour
of swelling granular materials, which can contribute to understanding
percolation phenomena in various fields.