Discharging trajectory of the bucket wheel stacker-reclaimer based on DEM

Abstract

Traditional method of discharging trajectory of the bucket wheel stacker-reclaimer relies on the single particle theory, in which the single particle’s imposed force and motion represents the motion of the whole particles group. This method ignores the collision and friction between particles as well as between particle and geometry. Therefore, the calculated value obtained by the traditional method is smaller than the actual discharging envelope range. On the other hand, mechanics model of particles established through the theory of granular mechanics is pretty complicated and hard to solve. This paper treated particles group as a collection of discrete elements and determined every single particle’s motion and mechanical property to obtain the overall motion state of the bulk particles. In this way, the discharging trajectories of the bucket could be drawn by simulating discharging process of the bucket under different rotational speeds. The discrete element method simulation result helps a lot for the design of the bucket wheel stacker-reclaimer.