The aim of this work is to understand the effect of very fine particles on the phenomenon of re-agglomeration in the grinding process. Various amount of fine glass beads of 0 to 20 µm (0 to 1% mass concentration) are added to a granular pile of glass beads of 200 to 300 µm rotated in a drum with inner diameter and length of 10 cm. The presence of fine particles shows an ambivalent effect on the stability of the granular heap. We established a stability diagram of the granular medium as a function of fine concentration and quantified the effect of fines combined with other parameters (relative humidity and rotation velocity). The stability of a granular heap in a rotating drum is determined by the measurement of the maximum angle of stability θm. Firstly, we studied the evolution of this angle with different rotation velocities. The experiments indicate that at low fine concentration (< 0:15%), the heap destabilizes through avalanches when the drum rotates, and increasing the fine quantity tends to decrease θm. When the rotation velocity increases, the granular medium transits from intermittent avalanche to continuous flow. In contrast, once the concentration is more than 0:15%, the destabilization of the heap proceeds through a stick-slip phenomenon at the drum wall, and the increase of the fraction of fines tends to increase the stability of the heap. This apparent contradictory behavior is linked to the modification of the destabilization location. In the small concentration regime, the avalanches start at the surface of the heap, and the filling of the interstitial space by the fine particles makes this surface smoother and smoother, thus destabilizing the heap. Besides, the fines induce, through the nucleation of capillary bridges between grains, an increase of the bulk cohesion of the heap. So in the large concentration regime, the heap behaves as a solid body and the destabilization occurs at its bottom. We also studied the influence of relative humidity on the granular stability in our experiment. We found out in the low fine concentration regime, the destabilization is independent of humidity. On the other hand, in the regime of high content of fines, high relative humidity induces a large cohesion due to the capillary condensation between the grains and the wall which induce the increase of the maximum stability angle.
