Discrepancy between particle and conveyor belt velocity

Submitted by nicolas.aalderete on Thu, 07/14/2016 - 02:31

Hi,

I'm new to DEM simulation using LIGGGHTS and I've got to simulate a transfer chute with conveyor belt. Using the "Conveyor" tutorial in the LIGGGHTS examples folder I have been able to set up my own simulation succesfully.

However, as I reviewed the results in ParaView I saw that the velocity of the particles in the conveyor belt was actually different to that of the conveyor belt itself. As soon as I detected this I decided to re-run the "Conveyor" tutorial and check the particle velocity against the conveyor belt and, as it turns out, they were also different.

Can someone help me out with this matter? What can explain this difference? Is it something regarding the conveyor belt mesh/geometry or should I let the simulation run enough so it reaches some kind of stationary state?

Thanks in advance
Nicholas

ckloss's picture

ckloss | Tue, 07/26/2016 - 00:07

HI Nicholas,

I can just tell from the conveyer tutorial - there for sure no steady state is reached, and Young's modulus is unrealistically low. But if you have a particle transported in steady state over a conveyor, it should reach the conveyor velocity

Best wishes
Christoph

hunger's picture

hunger | Tue, 07/26/2016 - 09:40

Depending on the contact models that are used, maybe the particles are rotating or there is some sliding or rolling friction that causes the difference in the velocity?

Best regards
Harald