Abstract
We study the packing of fine glass powders of mean particle diameter in the range (4–52) μm both experimentally and by numerical DEM simulations. We obtain quantitative agreement between the experimental and numerical results, if both types of attractive forces of particle interaction, adhesion and non-bonded van der Waals forces are taken into account. Our results suggest that considering only viscoelastic and adhesive forces in DEM simulations may lead to incorrect numerical predictions of the behavior of fine powders. Based on the results from simulations and experiments, we propose a mathematical expression to estimate the packing fraction of fine polydisperse powders as a function of the average particle size.
Highlights
We study the packing of fine glass powders of mean particle diameter in the range (4–52) mm both experimentally and by numerical Discrete Element Method (DEM) simulations
The size distribution of particles and the adequate description of attractive forces acting on particles of different size should be taken into account in DEM simulations in order to yield a predictive description of fine powders
The aim of our work is to provide numerical evidence that DEM simulations are able to describe the packing of fine powders correctly, that is in quantitative agreement with experiments, provided both the particle size distribution and the adequate model of attractive particle interaction are taken into account
Summary
We study the packing of fine glass powders of mean particle diameter in the range (4–52) mm both experimentally and by numerical DEM simulations. We will show that this model should contain both relevant contributions due to adhesion (here modeled through JKR theory21) and van der Waals interactions Neglecting any of these contributions leads for the case of fine powders to unacceptable deviations, that is the DEM method renders unreliable. We believe that this result, obtained for the packing of fine glass powders will be of relevance for other systems, in particular, when the system contains a significant fraction of small particles or a wide distribution of particle sizes
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