For years, ESI Eurosilo have successfully stored several, mostly low-density, non free-flowing bulk materials in their silo’s. Recently, demand has arisen whether bulk materials outside their current range could be stored using the same reclaim screw system. Unfortunately, the th
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For years, ESI Eurosilo have successfully stored several, mostly low-density, non free-flowing bulk materials in their silo’s. Recently, demand has arisen whether bulk materials outside their current range could be stored using the same reclaim screw system. Unfortunately, the theory behind the screw dates from the 1980s and assumes fine powdered bulk material, making it difficult to predict the reclaim screw performance. This paper demonstrates the effects of bulk materials on the scraping process of a reclaim screw by modelling its mechanics using DEM, as scraping is most prone to external influences like consolidation. The reclaim screw has been simplified to a single linearised flat disk, which is still able to exhibit a behaviour similar to the screw. The effects of bulk parameters have been investigated using the DEM model by a comparison to the analytical model to see whether the simulation results agree, a screening process to find the most significant bulk parameters on the scraping process and an optimisation to find the optimal screw design of a low- and high-density bulk material.
