(367j) Study of Granular Flow in a Wedge-Shaped Hopper Using DEM Simulations

Granular materials are made up of particles or discrete solids that flow like liquids. The flow of material through a hopper is a fundamental industrial unit operation and a granular flow problem in which material flows under gravity and leaves the storage bin through the outlet at the bottom of the bin. Using a discrete element method (DEM), the interaction between particles is evaluated using Newton’s laws of motion. It is important to understand and model such granular flows in terms of parameters such as grain size, solid fraction, wall roughness, particle-particle interactions, and others that affect them. The continuity equations and radial momentum balance are solved in a wedge-shaped hopper for a smooth wall and radial gravity (SWRG), which produces stress equations. DEM simulations are used to calculate stress and velocity fields for both incompressible and compressible flows in an SWRG problem. Our computational findings corroborate the theories of Savage (1965) and Prakash and Rao (1988). Additionally, a parametric analysis is used to investigate the detailed rheology of wedge-shaped hoppers by varying the parameter; velocity increases with increasing orifice size, velocity decreases with increasing wedge angle, considerable changes occur when friction coefficient is varied, and no significant changes occur when stiffness is varied.