Research And Development Of The Model Software Towards Grinding Process Simulation Platform

Grinding process is a critical procedure of mineral process, and its main task is transforming the ore from large to small by milling and classification, to liberate the valuable minerals from the discardable gangue, meet the requirements of production index and avail to the subsequent beneficiation process. This process has synthetic complexities such as multivariable, severe coupling, strong non-linearity, time-variability, and many key engineering parameters cannot be measured online. It is dramatically significant to study the control algorithms, optimization algorithms and the soft sensor techniques. In order to decrease the cost and risk of practical debugging, it has practical significance to found the simulation experiment system for grinding process in the laboratory.Supported by Process Industry Integrated Automation Center’s project "973Basic Research" complex manufacturing process integration control theory and technology basic research, and a model software towards grinding process simulation platform is designed and developed.The details are as follows:(1) The sequential modular approach is used to achieve the grinding process simulation. There are two circulation loops in the grinding process. One is between section1ball mill and grader machine, the other is between section2ball mill and pump pool. The two circulation loops are cut to determine the solving order of the unit module model. Based on the grinding kinetics and material balance principle, the unit module models including the main equipment model and the auxiliary process model are established. The main equipment model includes Section1ball mill model, grader model, sump model, section2ball model and the hydro-cyclone model. The auxiliary process model includes the ore feeder model of ball mill, the water model of ball mill entrance, the additional water model of grader, the additional water model of sump and the feeder model of hydro-cyclone.(2) The grinding process simulation platform software is chosen to be as a development platform. Based on the unit module models of grinding process, the model software of grinding process simulation is designed and developed. It includes design and development of the unit model, the model solution algorithm module, convergence module and the main program module, the design and development of the human-machine interface, the design and development of the communications interface. This software has many functions, such as dynamic process simulation, parameter setting, simulation process control, trend display, external communication, control mode selection, super-real-time simulation and so on.(3) The research experiments in normal and abnormal conditions have been done on the grinding process simulation object model software; the dynamic characteristics of the open loop of grinding process are examined; and the correctness of model is verified in the perspective of the grinding process mechanism. The effectiveness of the simulation model software is verified by the above experiments and the functional test experiment of the model software communication module.