An experimentally validated DEM study of powder mixing in a paddle blade mixer

Stefan Pantaleev, Slavina Yordanova, Alvaro Janda, Michele Marigo, Jin Ooi

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

An investigation on the predictive capabilities of Discrete Element Method simulations of a powder mixing process in a laboratory scale paddle blade mixer is presented. The visco-elasto-plastic frictional adhesive DEM contact
model of Thakur et al. (2014) was used to represent the cohesive behaviour of an aluminosilicate powder in which the model parameters were determined using experimental flow energy measurements from the FT4
powder rheometer. DEM simulations of the mixing process using the contact model parameters were evaluated against the experimental measurements of the mixing rate. The results demonstrated thatwhilst the DEM model
is capable of reproducing the FT4 flow energy of the powder to an excellent agreement, the simulations of the mixing process produced a qualitative agreement on the trend of the mixing rate in the experiments for both
dry andwet powders. The mixingwas under-predicted in the simulations, suggesting that flowenergy measurements alone may not be sufficient for the optimization of a DEM model of powder mixing.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)287-302
Number of pages16
JournalPowder Technology
Volume311
Early online date31 Jan 2017
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Apr 2017

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