A one-way coupled DEM-CFD scheme to mode free-surface flows in tumbling mills

There is a great need in the minerals processing industry for accurate prediction of slurry flows in tumbling mills. This flow is currently best understood through empirical, mechanistic and computational models. In the case of computational models, a realistic description of the system requires two fluid phases (for slurry and air) and one solid phase (for the charge). Existing 3-phase work makes use of a purely particle-based description, coupling the discrete element method (DEM) for the solids with smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) for the fluids. This work is the first presentation of a 3-phase approach for tumbling mills that combines a particle description for the solids, DEM, and a continuum description for the fluids, computational fluid dynamics (CFD). In this approach, the phase coupling is only one-way, in the sense that forces are applied from the solids to the fluids, but not the other way around. In the course of developing the approach, some computational geometry algorithms are presented for efficiently converting the particle description of DEM into an appropriate continuum description for CFD.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Department of Physics

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Malahe, Michael

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Buffler, Andy
• Govender, Indresan

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/10792

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/10792