Numerical simulation of granular mixing in a rotary drum using a generalized interpolation material point method

Numerical simulations using a generalized interpolation material point method (GIMP) and material point method were introduced into the studying of granular mixing in a rotary drum. A Drucker-Prager model that has an equal size with a Mohr-Coulomb criterion was adopted to predict the failure behavior of granular matter. Experiments and discrete element method simulations were conducted to validate the models, and GIMP was finally used due to its accuracy and the ability for eliminating the crossing boundary noise. Velocity field of bed surface and standard deviation were used to measure the mixing performance. In particular, the influence of mesh size, elastic modulus, cohesion, and filling level were investigated. The results of simulations show that the utilization of GIMP significantly reduces the computing cost of simulation. The analysis of mixing performance shows that mixing performance decreases with the increase of elastic moduli, cohesion of granular matter, and filling levels.