Simulation of Vibratory Conveyance of Granular Materials Using Discrete Element Method

The vibratory conveyance of granular materials can change the flow pattern easily by the control of the input vibratory energy and has been widely used for differing duties from feeding small and delicate components on automatic assembly lines to the transportation of large quantities of raw materials. There is a considerable descriptive data of vibratory conveyors, but for simplicity of analysis much previous theoretical analysis only predicts the motion of a particle on a vibrating plate. In the present work, the vibratory conveyance of granular materials was investigated by means of Discrete Element Method (DEM) in which granular materials are treated as 3-dimensional models. It is shown that the mean velocity for transport of granular materials depends on the frequency and amplitude of the vibrating vessel as well as on other various physical parameters.