Experimental study on the ceramic granular flow in a rotary drum

In the present study, we experimentally investigate the granular flow of zirconium dioxide particles in a rotating drum (at the speed of 1-30 rpm), focusing on understanding the forces between particle (diameter in order of 100 m). The diameter of the drum is 80 mm and two different heights of 1 and 8 mm are considered. While varying the drum height and rotating speed, we measured the trajectory, velocity and acceleration of each particle using the particle tracking velocimetry technique. It is found that the mechanisms of inducing stresses between particles are disparate each other depending on the location of the particle, i.e., stress received by particle in active layer is mainly generated from the particle-particle collision while the stress received by particles in the plug flow region is mostly attributed to the translational stress. Further discussion about the transition condition of the granular bed motion, from rolling to cascading, of which is associated with both the fill fraction of the rotary drum and diameter of the particle relative to the rotary drum diameter, is to be reported.