Published on: November 16, 2022
Mineral mining can cause significant wear on equipment such as liners. Learn more about a DEM study by mineAlloy to improve wear resistance, design better liners, and reduce physical testing requirements.
Wear on mining equipment liners can lead to economic loss and environmental harm. Composites can be designed to reduce abrasion, but traditionally, extensive laboratory and field tests have been needed, and these tests can be expensive or difficult to perform.
To reduce the need for these tests, the ARC Training Centre in Alloy Innovation for Mining Efficiency – mineAlloy used Rocky DEM software to simulate the wear behavior of composites. Additionally, DEM enabled the assessment of information such as particle flow quantities. The goal was to design liners for mining equipment with improved wear resistance.
The research team conducted the Dry Sand Rubber Wheel (DSRW) test, a commonly used laboratory-scale abrasive wear test, and compared different composite designs. The experimental results showed good agreement with the simulation results and confirmed the proposed composite design, which was based on DEM predictions.
In composite design, many geometrical parameters, such as the size of the reinforcements and other geometrical relationships, affect the particle flow and the resulting wear resistance. To make meaningful conclusions, researchers and engineers need insight into particle parameters such as the quantities associated with the sliding or rolling motion. DEM is needed, because these parameters cannot accurately be assessed experimentally.
The abrasive particle size distribution was simulated quantitatively (scale 1:1), and the particle shape (non-spherical) was implemented qualitatively.
Based on these insights, the team used Rocky DEM to simulate an industry-scale chute, extracting important physical parameters associated with the particle flow, such as particle flow trajectories. Ultimately, the researchers and engineers were able to understand the relationship between geometrical design parameters, particle flow, and resulting wear. Then they could develop an optimum design.
Rocky’s solution reduced the physical testing requirements and DEM was able to test concepts and proposed design principles faster and more cost-effectively than they would have been with experiments. Engineers derived principles for wear-resistant composites with inserts, ultimately improving the service life of the wear liner.
We thank Dr. Daniel Grasser and the ARC Training Centre in Alloy Innovation for Mining Efficiency (mineAlloy), Deakin University, Australia, for sharing their research details.
Associate Research Fellow at the Institute for Frontier Materials (IFM), Deakin University
Dr. Daniel Grasser has expertise in Discrete Element Modelling (DEM), design engineering and experimental wear testing. He is an Associate Research Fellow at the Institute for Frontier Materials (IFM), Deakin University, currently working on wear related challenges.
