Investigation of 3D particle flow in a flighted rotating drum

Abstract

To validate the particle motion in flighted rotating drum (FRD), a laboratory FRD was built and operated at 15% filling degree and 10 rpm rotation speed using plastic balls as bed material. The particle tracking velocimetry (PTV) and magnetic particle tracking (MPT) techniques were applied to investigate the particle flow behavior. The 3D particle flow was modeled by Discrete Element Method (DEM) with LIGGGHTS. The height of the barycenter of all overall particles and particle instantaneous velocity were calculated from PTV and DEM data. The 3D time-averaged particle velocity distributions obtained from MPT experiment and DEM simulation were compared.Keywords: flighted rotating drum; particle motion; particle tracking velocimetry; magnetic particle tracking; DEM simulation.