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 flow. Our computational results fit the theory developed by Savage (1965) and Prakash and Rao (1988). The present study also includes parametric analyses to investigate wedge-shaped hopper rheology in depth.

Keywords: granular materials, wedge-shaped hopper, DEM simulations