VALIDATION OF BREAKAGE MODEL IN THE DISCRETE ELEMENT METHOD BY SIMULATION OF SINGLE PARTICLE IMPACT

Resumo

The discrete element method (DEM) is a powerful tool to describe the behavior of particulate flows, however when simulating particle handling in DEM environments, breakage is not considered in most of the cases due to the limitations presented by different techniques available currently. When simulating particles that are subjected to breakage, its absence may lead to erroneous results and this situation becomes critical when simulating systems that are meant to perform particle breakage during operation, as crushers and mills used across different areas of study. The work uses the new model implemented in the commercial DEM platform Rocky DEM 4.1 (Tavares Breakage Model) to replicate bench-scale tests used in mineral industry for ore characterization. The work demonstrated that the model has potential to describe particle breakage, comparing numerical results from the model with results achieved in simulation.