Disruptive packing of binary mixtures
Date
2016
Authors
Zou, Shuai, author
Heyliger, Paul, advisor
Bareither, Christopher, committee member
Shuler, Scott, committee member
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Abstract
Granular materials are common in many areas such as civil engineering, food industry,and chemistry. The discrete element method has been demonstrated to be an eectivemethod to study the particle dynamics of such materials over the past several decades. Thepacking of monosized spherical particles has been well studied from both numerical andexperimental perspectives. However, the study of packings of a binary mixture that containsparticles of two dierent sizes has been limited because of the numerous variables that aectthe packing structure.The potential variables for packing of binary mixtures of spherical particles blended bygeometric disruptors in a gravity loaded ramp are evaluated in this thesis. The complexity ofthe disruptor geometry was used as the primary variable to study the resulting packing of twodierent-sized particles. The nal packing structure was quantied by coordination number,radial distribution function, packing density, and vertical position of the smaller-diameterparticles. Based on the analysis conducted in this thesis, the mean coordination number ofall particles, larger particles and smaller particles, generally increases with the complexity ofdisruptor geometry. The mean vertical position of smaller particles decrease with an increasein the complexity of the disruptor geometry. The radial distribution function of each type ofparticle in a binary mixture has the same characteristics of the radial distribution functionof mono-size particle packing. The methodology presented in this thesis can be eective toanalyze binary mixtures of spherical particles.
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Subject
discrete element method
binary mixture