3D Discrete Element Model of Silo Discharge

Silos are used by food industry, agriculture, mining and pharmaceutical industries for storing granular materials. The outflow properties of silos depend on the properties of the stored material and on the silo design. For this reason this has long been a subject of interest to both researchers and process engineers. In this paper a new numerical model for modeling silo discharge is proposed. This model was made by Discrete Element Method. We used this method because all of the analytical models are not able to describe the process in non-stationary case but DEM is suitable for describe the whole discharge process. Relying on previous models we established a new numerical model of silo discharge.