A Comparative Study of the Performance of Different Particle Models in Simulating Particle Charging and Burden Distribution in a Blast Furnace within the DEM Framework

There has been growing interest in applying the DEM (discrete element method) to study charging and burden distribution a BF (blast furnace). In practice, real particles are non-spherical. However, spherical have mostly used previous investigations. Furthermore, various particle models developed describe non-spherical particles. effects of using different on behavior still unclear. Therefore, comparative how shape model impacts was conducted. Specifically, multi-sphere model, polyhedral super-ellipsoid first established. Then, experiments simulations quartz sand lab-scale bell-less top were performed. The results indicated that number sub-spheres, principle creating for multi-spheres, planes polyhedrons, indices super-ellipsoids could all affect accuracy efficiency. Moreover, achieve reasonable efficiency, with highest simulation but at cost rather heavy computational burden.