Investigation of spherical and non-spherical binary particles flow characteristics in a discharge hopper

The particulate flow characteristics of granular particles including mung beans, wooden spheres, wooden cylinders, wooden cubic, plastic spheres, plastic cylinders, and their binary mixtures in a flat bottom hop-per were studied experimentally using high-speed high-resolution camera recordings. An image process-ing method based on the color threshold was developed to calculate the area ratio for binary mixtures. The mass discharge rates, the residue inclination angles, and the changes in edge height and center height with time were also investigated. In addition, the effects of different initial packing patterns on the par-ticulate flow, mixing and segregation behaviors were analyzed and compared. It is interesting to find that the shape of particles and the initial binary particle packing patterns have significant effects on the dis-charging characteristics. The results of this study provide helpful guidance for industrial applications and provide experiment data for computational model validation.(c) 2023 The Society of Powder Technology Japan. Published by Elsevier BV and The Society of Powder Technology Japan. All rights reserved.