Experimental study of the particle motion in flighted rotating drums by means of Magnetic Particle Tracking

The particle motion in flighted rotating drums (FRD) is still not fully understood due to the many influencing variables and its complexity. The method of Magnetic Particle Tracking (MPT) offers new possibilities for this purpose. In this work, the MPT is adopted and applied to study particle motion in FRD for the first time. The experiments were conducted using plastic balls and soybeans at 5% filling degree under various drum rotating speeds (10 rpm–40 rpm). Particle trajectories, translational velocity distributions, rotational velocity distributions, falling time of dilute phase, and instantaneous velocity of dilute phase in the equatorial region of the drum were studied. As the measurements revealed, the particle motion in flighted rotating drum is strongly influenced by the drum rotating speed and slightly affected by particle size and shape in the range investigated here.