A Numerical Study on the Optimization of the Material Pressure of the Feeding System

Abstract

To solve the problem of high energy consumption caused by the large initial material pressure of the feeding system, the macroscopic and mesoscopic laws of the effect of the movement of the feeder on the material pressure were studied, and an optimization method of changing the initial position of the feeder to reduce the initial material pressure is proposed. First, the influence of the movement direction of the feeder on the material pressure was studied based on the discrete element method and verified by experiments. A single-factor experiment was designed to analyze the influence of particle size, material repose angle, and bin slope on material pressure, drawing the applicable conditions of the proposed method. On this basis, the influence of the movement state of the feeder on the change of material pressure during the descent process was studied. Then, the motion parameters of the selected feeder descending process were optimized by the response surface method. Finally, case analyses of the vibrating feeding system and the scraper feeding system were carried out. The Discrete Element Method (DEM) calculation results show that the movement of the feeder will cause different distributions and evolution of the force chain on the mesoscale, which will result in different changes in the macroscopic material pressure. The initial material pressure and the material resistance were reduced in the optimized feeding system.