Three-dimensional modeling of system of vibrating spherical balls using discrete element method

The modeling of particulate systems has been an important focus of research worldwide, as these are fairly common in nature, such as rain drops in air, snowfall, and several industrial processes such as chemistry, agriculture, pharmaceutical, powder metallurgy, soil mechanics, casting, cement manufacturing, civil, and etc. In recent years, one of important aspects of the granular material physics in industries is controlling way of the granular flow. One of the best ways of controlling the flow is the use of mechanical vibrations to guide the particles in desirable way. In this paper the effect of horizontal harmonic vibration on the particles flow is theoretically and experimentally investigated. During the base vibration, the spherical particles collide with each other and with the walls as well, causing a global pattern of particle motion which is interpreted as flow. The motion of spherical particles and the interaction forces due to the vibration is obtained numerically via discrete element method (DEM). Finally, the presented numerical model is compared with the experimental one and a good agreement between them is noticed.