Analysis Of Scraper Conveyor Transporting Coal Powder Based On Discrete Element Method

In fully mechanized coal mining face,the scraper conveyor is not only the main bearing mechanism of the coal powder transportation,but also support fulcrum of the orbit of coal mining machine and hydraulic.So it plays as an irreplaceable role.The rationality and reliability of the scraper conveyor design can influence the mine production directly.With the development of computer and modern design,three dimensional dynamic design and optimization simulation is becoming the trend of modern mechanical design and development.The current designs and studies are based on the finite element method,they regard the bulk in the scraper conveyor middle trough as a continuous whole,or directly as pressure to the middle trough.The conclusion and optimizations are made after the establishment of relevant mechanical equations based on finite element method and simulation by three-dimensional modeling software and finite element analysis software.But the coal powder is a kind of classical particulate matter,there is a complex mechanical effects can not be ignored since the contact of bulk with itself and outside material.It is hard to obtain the reasonable results with the traditional methods of continuum mechanics like finite element method.In this case,the introduction of discrete element method can make a better study on the mechanical effect of the bulk inside and outside.Then a more reliable result can be obtained.EDEM is currently the most advanced discrete element analysis software.It is used to collaboratively model the discrete element analysis model of the scraper conveyor middle trough transporting the bulk with UGNX and simulate the movements of the coal powder in the scraper conveyor middle trough in different working conditions including stable condition,starting condition and stopping condition in this subject.This article studied not only the particle size distribution and the velocity distribution of the coal powder in all kinds of stable conditions,but also the movement of the coal powder in different working conditions,at last this article analyzed the influence factors of the mass flow rate.When studying the particle size distribution and the velocity distribution of the coal powder in all kinds of stable condition in the scraper conveyor,the coloring system of the post-processing module in EDEM software was used to color the simulation results for different stable conditions including different transporting velocity,different transporting angle,different feeding speed and different mining height.The distribution of particle color can reflect the particle size distribution and the velocity distribution.When studying the movements of coal powder in stable condition,starting condition and stopping condition,the movement of coal powder can be analyzed by coloring the trajectory of marked particles in this article.When studying the influence factors of the mass flow rate,the simulations of the bulk transportation with different transporting speed.and different static friction between particles were made to get the mass flow rates of each simulation and analyze the the influence factors of the mass flow rate.