First Observation of the Blending Zone Morphology at the Interface of Reclaimed Asphalt Binder and Virgin Bitumen

One of the challenges in designing recycled asphalt mixtures with a high amount of RAP is to estimate the blending degree between RAP binder and the added virgin bitumen. The extent of blending is crucial in this case as asphalt concrete response is influenced by the final binder properties. This paper focuses on the evaluation of interaction...

Smart sensors in asphalt: monitoring key process parameters during and post construction

The Fibre Bragg Gratings (FBG) technology based on integrated photonics, offers specific benefits including thermal mapping, damage detection, shape- and distributed sensing. This makes it useful for determining pavement behaviour during extreme weather conditions e.g. freeze-thaw cycles when harsh winter conditions could damage the asphalt...

A consolidation-penetration test for wedge-shaped penetration tools

Grabs are often used for unloading bulk carriers that deliver iron ore cargoes. The grabbing process starts with cutting the free surface of the bulk iron ore. For that reason, the initial penetration depth of the grabs' knives into the material is an important success factor in their filling ratio. The resistance to penetration is influenced...

DEM particle upscaling for large-scale bulk handling equipment and material interaction

Purpose: The development of bulk material handling equipment can be accelerated and made less expensive when testing of virtual prototypes is adopted. However, the modelling of a grab unloader requires a large volume (77 m3) of iron ore pellets, making the computational costs prohibitive. This paper investigates the extent to which the...

Bulk properties variability and interdependency determination for cohesive iron ore

An ideal unit of bulk transport or storage equipment is able to handle cohesive iron ore with consistent productivity. In practice, however, uncontrollable bulk property variations affect the productivity. Therefore, it is important to understand the effect of uncontrollable variations on the process. This study quantifies variability and...

A hybrid particle-geometric scaling approach for elasto-plastic adhesive DEM contact models

The computation time of Discrete Element Method (DEM) simulations increases exponentially when particle size is reduced or the number of particles increased. This critical challenge limits the use of DEM simulation for industrial applications, such as powder flow in silos. Scaling techniques can offer a solution to reduce computation time. In...