Experimental and numerical study of potassium chloride flow using smoothed particle hydrodynamics

Abstract

Materials in granular form are widely used in industry and in the society as a whole. Granular materials can have various behaviours and properties. An accurate prediction of their flow behaviour is important to avoid handling and transportation issues. In this study, the flow behaviour of dry potassium chloride (KCl) in granular form was investigated experimentally and simulated numerically. The aim was to develop numerical tools to predict the flow of KCl in transportation and handling systems and granular material flow in various industrial applications. Two experimental setups were used to quantify the flow of KCl. In the first setup, the collapse of an axisymmetric granular column was investigated. In the second setup, digital image correlation was used to obtain velocity field measurements of KCl during the discharge of a flat-bottomed silo. The two experiments were represented numerically using two-dimensional computational domains. The smoothed particle hydrodynamics method was used for the simulations, and a pressure-dependent, elastic-plastic constitutive model was used to describe the granular materials. The numerical results were compared to the experimental observations, and an adequate qualitative and quantitative agreement was found for the granular column collapse and the silo discharge. Overall, the simulated flow patterns showed adequate agreement with the experimental results obtained in this study and with the observations reported in the literature. The experimental measurements, in combination with the numerical simulations, presented in this study adds to the knowledge of granular material flow prediction. The results of this study highlights the potential of numerical simulation as a powerful tool to increase the knowledge of granular material handling operations.