DEM study of granular flow around blocks attached to inclined walls

Joel Samsu, Zongyan Zhou, David Pinson, Sheng Chew

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference PaperResearchpeer-review

Abstract

Damage due to intense particle-wall contact in industrial applications can cause severe problems in industries such as mineral processing, mining and metallurgy. Studying the flow dynamics and forces on containing walls can provide valuable feedback for equipment design and optimising operations to prolong the equipment lifetime. Therefore, solids flow-wall interaction phenomena, i.e. induced wall stress and particle flow patterns should be well understood. In this work, discrete element method (DEM) is used to study steady state granular flow in a gravity-fed hopper like geometry with blocks attached to an inclined wall. The effects of different geometries, e.g. different wall angles and spacing between blocks are studied by means of a 3D DEM slot model with periodic boundary conditions. The findings of this work include (i) flow analysis in terms of flow patterns and particle velocities, (ii) force distributions within the model geometry, and (iii) wall stress vs. model height diagrams. The model enables easy transfer of the key findings to other industrial applications handling granular materials.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationEPJ Web of Conferences
Number of pages4
Volume140
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 30 Jun 2017
EventPowders and Grains 2017 - Montpellier, France
Duration: 3 Jul 20177 Jul 2017
Conference number: 8th
http://pg2017.org/en/

Conference

ConferencePowders and Grains 2017
Country/TerritoryFrance
CityMontpellier
Period3/07/177/07/17
Internet address

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