(85f) Granular Surface Flow in a Two-Dimensional Rotating Drum: Particle Dynamics Simulation

Granular surface flows in partially-filled rotating drums are widely encountered in many industrial applications, for example, incineration, calcination, granulation, etc., but the understanding of such flows is still less clear than that of fluid flows. In this paper, a two-dimensional horizontal drum, whose axial length is only 3~5 times of particle diameters, is introduced to eliminate the effect of the inside wall. The particle dynamics (PD) simulation, derived from molecular dynamics simulation, has been performed on a 100mm drum with 1mm particles. The simulated results are validated by the experimental data via a fast digital camera. The effects of different inter-particle contact laws, linear or non-linear, are discussed. The dependence of flow behavior on rotation rate is then analyzed on the basis of the PD results. Finally, the interesting phenomenon of the velocity profiles observed in surface flow is explained.