Abstract
We analyze inertial granular flows and show that, for all values of the inertial number I, the effective friction coefficient μ arises from three different parameters pertaining to the contact network and force transmission: 1) contact anisotropy, 2) force chain anisotropy and 3) friction mobilization. Our extensive 3D numerical simulations reveal that μ increases with I mainly due to an increasing contact anisotropy and partially by friction mobilization whereas the anisotropy of force chains declines as a result of the destabilizing effect of particle inertia. The contact network undergoes topological transitions, and beyond I ≃ 0.1 the force chains break into clusters immersed in a background "soup" of floating particles. We show that this transition coincides with the divergence of the size of fluidized zones characterized from the local environments of floating particles and a slower increase of μ with I.