The archetypal feature of a viscoplastic fluid is its yield stress: If the material is not sufficiently stressed, it behaves like a solid, but once the yield stress is exceeded, the material flows like a fluid. Such behavior characterizes materials common in industries such as petroleum and chemical processing, cosmetics, and food processing and in geophysical fluid dynamics. The most common idealization of a viscoplastic fluid is the Bingham model, which has been widely used to rationalize experimental data, even though it is a crude oversimplification of true rheological behavior. The popularity of the model is in its apparent simplicity. Despite this, the sudden transition between solid-like behavior and flow introduces significant complications into the dynamics, which, as a result, has resisted much analysis. Over recent decades, theoretical developments, both analytical and computational, have provided a better understanding of the effect of the yield stress. Simultaneously, greater insight into the material behavior of real fluids has been afforded by advances in rheometry. These developments have primed us for a better understanding of the various applications in the natural and engineering sciences.

An experimental investigation is conducted into the collapse of granular columns inside rectangular channels. The final shape is documented for slumps inside relatively wide channels, and for collapses inside much narrower slots. In both cases, the collapse is initiated by withdrawing a swinging gate or sliding door, and the flow remains fairly two-dimensional. Four different granular media are used; the properties of the materials vary significantly, notably in their angles of friction for basal sliding and internal deformation. If H is the initial height of the column, h ∞ the maximum final height of the column and a the initial aspect ratio, then the data suggest that H/ h ∞ ∼ a 0.6 in wide channels and H/ h ∞ ∼ a 0.5 for narrow slots. For the runout, we find that (l ∞ − L)/L ∼ a 0.9±0.1 for wide channels, and (l ∞ − L)/L ∼ a 0.65±0.05 or l ∞ /L ∼ a 0.55±0.05 for narrow slots, where l ∞ is the maximum runout of the material and L the initial length of the column along the channel (a := H/L). In all cases, the numerical constant of proportionality in these scaling relations shows clear material dependence. In wide slots, there is no obvious universal scaling behaviour of the final profile, but such a behaviour is evident in narrow slots. The experimental results are compared with theoretical results based on a shallow granular-flow model. The qualitative behaviour of the slump in the wide slot is reproduced by the theoretical model. However, there is qualitative disagreement between theory and the experiments in the narrow slot because of the occurrence of secondary surface avalanching.

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We investigate a model for the excitation of high‐order oscillations in roAp stars. In this model we assume that the strong concentration of magnetic field about the magnetic poles is enough to suppress convection. Thus the model considered is composed of two polar regions, in which convection is presumed to be suppressed totally, and an equatorial region, where the convection is unaffected. This model is generated by building pairs of locally spherically symmetrical equilibria to represent the polar and equatorial regions of the star, which are patched together below the base of the convection zone. Gravitational settling of heavy elements is taken into account by choosing appropriate chemical composition profiles for both the polar and equatorial regions. Our results indicate that the composite model is unstable against axisymmetric non‐radial high‐order modes of pulsation that are aligned with the magnetic poles. The oscillations are excited by the κ mechanism acting principally in the hydrogen ionization zones of the polar regions. The effect of the lateral inhomogeneity on the second frequency differences is also investigated; we find that the perturbation to them by the inhomogeneity is of the same order as the second differences themselves, thereby hindering potential attempts to use such differences to identify the degrees of the modes in a straightforward way.