DEM simulations of spherical particle–particle collisions

Abstract

The randomness, diversity, and complexity of the high‐speed particle crushing process bring great difficulties to the theoretical analysis of powder engineering. In this paper, the discrete element method is used to simulate the collision of spherical particles, which provides a reference for studying the process and mechanism of crushing between particles under impact load. The Hertz–Mindlin with bonded contact model is used as the particle–particle contact model. The central collisions of particles with different diameter ratios under different high‐speed motions and the eccentric collisions with different eccentricities are discussed. The results show that the bond damage increases with the increase of relative velocity in both centre impact and eccentric impact. In centre collisions, particles of smaller objects are more fragmented than particles of larger objects. For smaller target particles, the larger the diameter ratio is, the more particle elements are detached from the target particles, and the greater the bond breakage rate. For larger target particles, the larger the diameter ratio is, the less the particle element falls off and the smaller the bond breakage rate. This provides guidance for the collision and crushing of particles with different particle size ratios and different eccentricities during high‐speed motion in engineering applications in the future.

Issue Highlights

“…Comprehensive simulations have shown that the proposed approach can lead to significant improvements of more than 20% in soil moisture estimation. [ 2 ]…”