An improved disk discontinuous deformation analysis model for simulating particle mixing process in rotary drums

Abstract This paper develops an improved disk discontinuous deformation analysis (DDDA) model to simulate mixing particles in rotary drums. The original DDDA is improved by developing a disk-movable line segment contact model to motivate the constant movements of the disks during the mixing operation. The analytical solution of the movement of a single disk in a rotary drum is achieved by building a force analysis model, and the improved DDDA is validated by comparing this analytical solution with the proposed numerical simulation. Then, the improved DDDA is utilized to simulate mixing 8805 disks in a rotary drum, during which the influences of rotational speed and layouts of stirring blades are studies. Model performance shows that, the improved DDDA is a feasible tool to simulate the particle mixing process in rotary drums, which may optimize schemes for mixing particles and designing mixing equipment in industry.