Minerals Engineering 24 (2011) 1586–1594

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Minerals Engineering
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/mineng

Prediction of the disc wear in a model IsaMill and its effect on the flow
of grinding media
C.T. Jayasundara a, R.Y. Yang a, A.B. Yu a,⇑, D. Curry b
a
Laboratory for Simulation and Modelling of Particulate Systems, School of Materials Science and Engineering, The University of New South Wales Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
b
Xstrata Technology, Brisbane, Queensland 4000, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Mill wear is a critical issue in mineral industries. It affects mill performance and the cost of replacing
Received 24 October 2010 worn parts is high. Understanding wear and its effect would provide a useful insight for process optimi-
Accepted 22 August 2011 sation. This paper combines the discrete element method (DEM) with a commonly used wear model to
Available online 19 September 2011
predict the wear pattern of stirring discs in a model IsaMill. The results show that wear is more severe at
the outer face of discs and the lifting side of holes. The simulated wear pattern has been compared with
Keywords: those observed in practice. The effect of disc wear on the flow of grinding media is also examined, show-
Wear
ing that with the increasing wear, impact energy increases while power draw shows a mix of slight
Stirred mills
Discrete element method
increase and decrease. The findings would be useful to the improvement in the design and control of
Granular flow IsaMills.
Mineral processing Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction nomena of the slurry without considering the flow of grinding

media.
IsaMill is a horizontal high speed stirred mill that operates with While these studies have been useful, particularly at the early
very high power intensity. It has been increasingly used in the stage of development, they are largely based on the macroscopic
mineral industry for fine and coarse grinding, because of its high observations and the findings are sometimes difficult to generalize.
energy efficiency compared with other conventional grinding tech- To understand the underlying mechanisms of grinding, more de-
niques (Gao et al., 2001). Inside the shell, there are rotating grind- tailed information at a microscopic scale is required. Numerical
ing discs mounted on a shaft, which is coupled to a motor and simulation provides a useful research tool to achieve this goal. In
gearbox. The grinding discs agitate the media and ore particles in particular, numerical models based on the discrete element meth-
slurry that is continuously fed into the feed port. A special product od (DEM) can produce information about the forces acting on and
separator is installed to allow the product to exit and generate high the trajectory of individual particles (Cundall and Stack, 1979).
centrifugal forces to retain the media inside the grinding chamber. DEM was first introduced to ball mill simulation by Mishra and
Despite becoming a popular fine grinding technique, IsaMill is Rajamani (1994) and followed by others for different types of
still a new technology, and its optimum control and scale-up rely grinding mills as a whole (Inoue and Okaya, 1996; Cleary, 1998;
on experimental methods and industry experience, rather than Kano and Saito, 1998; Hoyer, 1999). It has been further developed
the detailed scientific principles. Gao and Forssberg (1993) and and widely used to study various particulate systems as reviewed
Gao et al. (1996) conducted extensive laboratory tests to investi- by Zhu et al. (2007 & 2008). DEM has not been applied to IsaMills
gate the performance of IsaMills. Using plant data, mill scale-up until recent. Yang et al. (2006) showed that DEM can be applied to
studies have also been done under certain operating conditions IsaMill process under dry conditions and later it was extended to
based on the specific input energy (Gao et al., 2001). Investigations multiple discs for studying the microdynamic properties related
on horizontal stirred mills which are similar to IsaMills have been to the grinding performance (Jayasundara et al., 2006a). It was
reported by Blecher et al. (1996) and Kwade (1999). They showed shown that grinding process in stirred mill follows the first-order
that grinding performance of stirred mills can be represented by kinetics and the rate constant can be correlated to the impact en-
the stress intensity and stress numbers, which are derived based ergy (Jayasundara et al., 2010). While these studies lay foundation
on empirical formulae. Their studies were focused on the flow phe- to numerical modelling of IsaMill process, there are other issues
associated with the grinding process which have not been
addressed.
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: + 61 2 9385 4429; fax: + 61 2 9385 5969. Wear is another important issue in grinding process. Discs in
E-mail address: [email protected] (A.B. Yu). IsaMills experience severe wear due to continuous interactions

0892-6875/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.mineng.2011.08.011
 C.T. Jayasundara et al. / Minerals Engineering 24 (2011) 1586–1594 1587

with grinding media and slurry, causing changed stirrer geometry (ii) excess kinetic energy of impact for collisions above a specified
and mill performance. The costs of replacing worn components and threshold damage velocity. The abrasion damage was predicted by
production lost during the mill downtime are significant (Rule another two measures: (i) shear work done by the contact model
et al., 2008). Therefore, better understanding of wear phenomena for collisions between particles and the liner; (ii) kinetic energy
can improve mill performance by extending disc life span. of each collision weighted by the collision angle which can be de-
Different types of wear models and equations are reported in scribed by the Finnie wear model. It was observed that the abra-
literature to study the wear phenomena in industrial processes. sion wear is more representative than impact wear on the Hicom
Most of them are derived based on empirical equations. Based on mill.
contact-mechanics Archard (1953) showed that worn volume can These previous studies showed that depending on the mill type
be represented by the sliding distance, applied load and the mate- and the grinding media flow pattern, dominant wear mechanism
rial hardness. This model can be applied to systems where there is could be different. Since numerical modelling of wear is computa-
a constant contact between two surfaces. It does not account for tionally intensive, particularly for large systems such as IsaMills,
the wear due to striking nature of particles on the contact surface, depending on the mill type and the scale of the system one has
which is generally described as erosion. Wear due to erosion had to employ a feasible wear model in a simulation study. Up until
been extensively studied by Finnie (1960) and Bitter (1963). They now no experimental or numerical studies have been reported
showed that the erosion can be described by the impact velocity on the disc wearing in IsaMills and the consequent effect of wear
and angle of attack. Although there are different wear models on the mill performance. The scope of this work is twofold: (i) to
available, it was reported that no single predictive equation or develop a wear model based on DEM which can be used to explore
group of limited equations could be found for general and practical the disc hole wear of IsaMills; (ii) to investigate the effect of disc
use (Meng and Ludema, 1995). wear on the flow of grinding media. The simulated results are com-
On the other hand, a number of experimental methods have pared with real wear profile to verify the proposed model.
been developed to examine the abrasive wear in grinding mills
(Spero et al., 1991). Among these tests, Yancey, Geer and Price 2. Model development
(YGP) abrasion test appears to be the most widely used and ac-
cepted test for mineral ores. Results obtained from these tests 2.1. DEM model
are sometimes arguable because, it was reported that the results
obtained from the YGP abrasion test were not in good agreement The DEM model employed in this work has been detailed else-
with those obtained in the CE-hammer mill abrasion test (Sligar, where (Jayasundara et al., 2006a; Yang et al., 2006) and will be
1986). Extensive experiments have been reported by Powell briefly described here. In a DEM simulation, each particle possess
(1991) to examine the influence of mill-liner wear on grinding per- translational motion and rotational motion, which can be de-
formance of ball mills. A liner-wear monitor was developed that scribed by Newton’s second law of motion, given by
could be used to take many readings of the wear profile of the
worn surfaces. Experiments were carried out over a year to exam- dv i X n
mi ¼ ðFij þ Fsij þ mi gÞ ð1Þ
ine the influence of mill-liner wear on grinding performance of dt
grinding mills. Wear and performance characteristics of lifter bars and
were evaluated in relation to their height, together with the cost-
life performance of the backing materials used for liners in rotary dxi X
Ii ¼ ðRi  Fsij  lr Ri jFnij jxi Þ ð2Þ
mills. Although experiments and plant trials were used to select dt
the liner material and design, they do suffer from a number of where vi, xi and Ii are, respectively, the translational velocity, angu-
drawbacks such as downtime of monitoring the liners, taking a lar velocity and moment of inertia of particle i, Ri is a vector running
long time, usually over a year to yield results, and often the results from the centre of the particle to the contact point with its magni-
can be inconclusive as plant conditions vary with time (Powell tude equal to particle radius Ri. Fnij and Fsij are respectively, the nor-
et al., 2006). mal and the tangential contact forces imposed on particle i by
Therefore, alternative techniques such as numerical modelling particle j. For estimating the contact forces, the Hertz-Mindlin con-
are becoming more popular in nowadays to investigate the wear tact model was employed. The contact forces of normal and tangen-
phenomena in grinding mills. Using a simplified DEM model Rad- tial directions, Fnij and Fsij , were calculated according to the following
ziszewski and Tarasiewicz (1993) showed that dissipated energy equations:
can be used to predict the wear profile of ball mill lifters. Although  
there are many wear mechanisms occurring in a grinding mill, 2 pffiffiffi 3 pffiffiffipffiffiffiffiffi
Fnij ¼  n2n  c E R
E R n
 nn ðv ij  n
^ ij Þ nij ð3Þ
these investigators focused on adhesive and abrasion wear mecha- 3
nisms. After a back-calculation from experimental data under dry and
conditions, they obtained wear model parameters for abrasive h  3=2 i
grinding wear. Kalala et al. (2005) used DEM to simulate the wear Fsij ¼ sgnðns ÞljF nij j 1  1  minðns ; ns;max Þ=ns;max ð4Þ
profile of lifters in ball mills and compared with plant data. In their
model, both impact and abrasion damages were considered. The where E ¼ Y=ð1  r e 2 Þ, and Y and r
e are, respectively, Young’s mod-
wear surface was divided into small elements and the data was ulus and Poisson ratio; nn is the overlap between particles i and j; nij
accumulated in each element and the worn surface profile was is a unit vector running from the centre of particle j to the centre of
determined. They found that contribution of impact energy to  ¼ R=2 for mono-sized particle. The normal damping
particle i; R
the wear of the lifter is more important than the contribution of constant, n, is the material property directly linked to the coefficient
abrasive energy. Since this model is computationally intensive, at of restitution e. ns and ns,max are, respectively, the total and maxi-
present large scale 3D simulations are prohibitively costly (Kalala mum tangential displacements of particles during contact. The
et al., 2005). Based on DEM, Cleary et al. (2010) developed a 3D present study used 3 mm glass beads with material properties of
wear model for the so called Hicom mill. In their wear model, both density 2.5103 kg m3, Young’s modulus 1.0  107 N m2, Poisson
impact and abrasion damages were considered. Impact damage ratio 0.29, sliding friction coefficient 0.2 and restitution coefficient
was predicted by two measures: (i) energy dissipated in the nor- 0.68. Simulated material properties such as particle density and
mal direction during collisions between the particles and the liner; Poisson ratio are the same as glass beads. The sliding friction
1588 C.T. Jayasundara et al. / Minerals Engineering 24 (2011) 1586–1594

coefficient of glass beads was measured by using pin-on-disc Trib- grinding mills is dependent in some way on the rate of energy
ometer (ASTM G99); this value is used for the particle-drum con- absorption of the boundary surfaces during collision with particles
tact. Restitution coefficient is obtained by dropping a sample of (Cleary, 2001). The exact form of this dependence is currently
3 mm glass beads under gravity and measuring the rising height. unknown Cleary et al. (2010) used two energy based methods
Young’s modulus used in the simulation is smaller than the real to predict wear arising from each of the impact and abrasion
glass beads (100 GPa) to reduce the simulation time. The current mechanisms and found that wear due to abrasion is more repre-
value ensures that the maximum overlap is less than 3% of particle sentative than wear due to impact. They showed that the abrasive
diameter and has been demonstrated that it does not affect the final wear can be predicted by two measures: (i) shear work done by the
results much (Zhou et al., 1999; Yang et al., 2003b). contact force model; and (ii) kinetic energy weighted by the colli-
In industrial IsaMills, the main function of the product separator sion angle, which is based on the Finnie wear model. It was re-
is to retain the media in the mill. In addition, it will act as an impel- ported that these two measures equally give comparable results
ler and pump the slurry back to the grinding chambers. The effect with the real wear data obtained for the Hicom mill.
of slurry is not considered in this work. Therefore, in this model, we The Finnie model was developed considering a single rigid abra-
do not consider the effect of the product separator. The mill used in sive particle which strikes on the target surface in such a way as to
this work consists of a fixed chamber, a rotating shaft and three displace or cut away part of the surface. Removal of material is
stirrers which are rigidly attached to the shaft, as shown in somewhat similar to the tooth of a milling cutter or the grains
Fig. 1. A simulation starts from a packing process in which the shaft on a grinding wheel, as schematically shown in Fig. 2. The volume
and the discs are at rest and particles are fed into the mill to form a of material Q, removed by a single abrasive particle of mass m and
stable packed bed. Then the shaft and stirrers start to rotate at a gi- velocity v is given by (Finnie, 1960):
ven speed to agitate the particles. For all simulations, the mill is 8 
filled up to 80% by volume (41,000 particles) and mill speed is < mv 2 ½sin 2a  3 sin2 a a 6 18:5
8p
set to 1000 rpm. All the results are analysed when the system Q¼  ð5Þ
: mv 2
cos2 a a P 18:5
reaches the steady state. The steady state is determined by moni- 24p

toring the torque on the mill shaft. Fig. 1 shows the sectional front
and end views of the mill. where p is the yield stress of the target material. In this work it is
assumed that the disc is made of high strength alloy steel (ASTM
A514) which has the yield stress of 690 MPa.
2.2. Wear model To examine the dominant wear mechanism, the spatial distri-
bution of shear energy and kinetic energy on the disc surface were
Wear of a solid surface due to particle erosion is widely encoun- accumulated for four revolutions of the disc (Fig. 3). Shear energy is
tered in industrial processes, such as erosion of turbine blades, defined as the shear work done by the contact model for collisions
control of sand blasting, damage of helicopter propellers, and wear between particles and the disc (Cleary et al., 2010). The results
of pneumatic pipelines (Fan et al., 1991). In these applications the show that abrasion would likely to be the dominant wear mecha-
target surface is attacked by solid particles entrained in a fluid nism for the outer surface and impact is most likely to be the main
stream. In general, the extent of surface erosion by impingement mechanism for the holes. Since the focus of this work is to examine
of abrasive particles depends on factors such as particle impinging the wear mechanism in the hole region, wear in the hole region can
velocity, impact angle, properties of impacting particles and prop- be best captured by the Finnie wear model which was developed
erties of target material. These concepts have been the foundation based on kinetic energy.
for most of the wear models including Finnie’s wear model (Finnie, From DEM simulations, information such as particle-disc im-
1960) which has been widely used in many industrial processes. By pact velocity, angle and location can be obtained. The disc is di-
far, the majority of erosion models have been developed based on vided into triangular surface mesh on which the worn volume
Finnie’s model or its modified versions (Bhasker, 2010; Lester et al., data are collected. When a particle is in contact with the disc, angle
2010). a and the relative velocity v, is obtained from the simulation and
In stirred mills, particles near the disc are subjected to intensive the corresponding worn volume is calculated according to Eq.
collisions with the disc. These collisions occur at an angle with the (5). When the system is at steady state, the simulation is carried
disc or they may slide on the disc which leads to abrasive wear. out for 1 s and the accumulated worn volume is recorded in the
Regardless of the nature of collision event, the rate of wear in corresponding triangular element. Note that the Finnie model only

39 X X`
Y Y` 10
Ø110
Ø18

9
Ø90
Ø25

(a) (b)
Fig. 1. Geometry of the model stirred mill: (a) sectional front elevation; and (b) sectional end elevation. All dimensions in mm.
 C.T. Jayasundara et al. / Minerals Engineering 24 (2011) 1586–1594 1589

As a result, the particle-disc relative velocity increases, leading to

an increased wear rate. On the other hand, the disc holes act as lift-
m ers and the particles in this region collide frequently with the hole
surface, again leading to an increased wear rate. Change of outer
α face profile has not been considered, because the focus of this work
is to investigate the effect on the hole shape on grinding perfor-
mance. Fig. 4b shows the corresponding wear rate in the hole re-
gion where b is the clockwise angle from the line connecting the
Fig. 2. Abrasive particle of velocity v striking a surface and removing material. disc and hole centres (Fig. 4b inset). From the simulations, it is ob-
served that the hole has the maximum wear at b  40°, which is
the lifting side of the hole, and the minimum wear at b = 225°.
captures the wear phenomena caused by a single particle attack By plotting the wear rate from b = 225° (as shown in Fig. 4b), it is
where the angle a and the relative velocity v are calculated just be- shown that the wear pattern is almost symmetric around b = 40°.
fore the contact. Thus, the model cannot be applied to a situation The wear rate is considered as a constant over an arbitrary time
where a particle is hit by other particles mid-way during the scour- period, e.g. one week, so that the total worn volume near the holes
ing impact. In fact, if a particle is hit by other particles when it is in within that time can be calculated. Depending on the mesh resolu-
contact with the surface, wear is caused by the abrasion. As we do tion and the time period, the wear profile has a tendency to be very
not consider the abrasion in this work, the effect of other particles spiky. The spikes can be removed by appropriate smoothing tech-
is not considered in this analysis. nique or by selecting a proper smooth profile (Cleary, 1998; Kalala
In practice, it takes months before discs wear out and need to be et al., 2005). The extent of the smoothing is compromised by the
replaced. It is computationally expensive and takes months for required accuracy and the simulation time. For instance, if the
DEM models to simulate the whole wear process. Instead, the pres- worn area of interest is small, by using a very fine mesh, accurate
ent study adopts the following procedure to model the wear pro- results can be obtained within a reasonable time. The same ap-
cess. Similar technique has been used by others to investigate proach, however, could not be used when the worn surface is con-
wear on ball mills (Radziszewski and Tarasiewicz, 1993; Kalala siderably large. Therefore, in order to achieve the results within a
et al., 2005). reasonable time, the following technique has been adopted in the
The simulation is firstly performed on a new disc for 1 s and the hole region.
amount of material worn out can be recorded over the whole disc. The worn volume in the hole region, which has to be removed in
Fig. 4a shows the spatial distribution of wear rate on a new disc. order to obtain the worn profile, is calculated by considering the
Significant wear can be seen near the disc holes and outer face of total worn volume, accumulated on the mesh that covers the inner
the disc (disc rotation anti-clockwise). For the outer edge, the surface of the hole. Note that the resolution of the mesh size is
velocity of particles is relatively low, compared to that of the disc. approximately 1 mm (33% of the particle size). From the spatial

Fig. 3. Energy dissipation on the disc surface after four revolutions (anti-clockwise): (a) shear energy; and (b) kinetic energy.

(a) (b) 7
Aw
Wear rate (mm /month)

5
β
3

wear rate 0
-135 -90 -45 0 45 90 135 180 225
1 unit = 1 mm3/month
β (deg)

Fig. 4. Initial wear rate: (a) Spatial distribution of wear; and (b) wear rate of the hole surface.
1590 C.T. Jayasundara et al. / Minerals Engineering 24 (2011) 1586–1594

Fig. 5. Schematic representation of the worn area within a hole as determined by the proposed numerical scheme.

(b)
(a)

wear rate
1 unit = 1 mm3/month

(c) (d)

Fig. 6. Evolution of disc hole profile with time: (a) new disc; (b) moderately worn disc after 4 months; (c) worn disc after 8 months; and (d) worn discs of industrial IsaMill
after 3000 h of operation (courtesy of Xstrata Technology, Australia).

wear distribution (Fig. 4a) it is shown that the worn profile should mill drum will be reduced. However, this may not affect the parti-
represent the crescent shape worn area Aw (Fig. 4a). To represent cle flow significantly because the majority of the energy transfer
this area, a circle is used whose centre is determined by moving from disc to particles occurs through holes (Jayasundara et al.,
it along the line which shows the angle of maximum wear rate 2006b). Therefore, the present study only considers the change of
(Fig. 5). Intersection of this circle with the hole, closely matches hole profile and the effect of disc wear on the outer face has not
the high wear area (Aw). Now the shape of the hole is modified been considered.
by removing the part of the disc, overlapping the high wear circle.
The simulation is then performed again for another second, based
on the new design and the new wear pattern is obtained for the 3. Results and discussion
next week. Thus, the third circular wear increment can be located
as shown in Fig. 5. Note that the angle of the line which corre- 3.1. Wear pattern
sponds to the maximum wear, increases with the subsequent hole.
Such process can be repeated to simulate the wear process over a Fig. 6 shows the wear pattern on the initial disc geometry.
very long time. Fig. 6b and c show the predicted geometry of the progressively
The highest wear rates can be seen at the disc outer face and worn holes after 4 and 8 months, respectively. It is evident that
near the holes regions. Disc outer face wear causes reduction in as wear increases, the hole geometry turns into an elongated shape
disc radius. As a result, the gap between disc outer face and the which moves towards the disc outer face as observed in practice
 C.T. Jayasundara et al. / Minerals Engineering 24 (2011) 1586–1594 1591

12 outwards, reducing the gap between hole edge and the outer face, as
initial observed in Fig. 6. This will eventually lead to structural failure of the
10 2 months disc, which is not desirable for effective grinding.
Wear rate (mm /month)

4 months
6 months
8 3.2. Effect of disc wear on particle flow
8 months
3

6 As the disc gradually wears out, it is expected that it will cause

different flow patterns and energy consumptions, hence different
milling performances. In this section, we investigate the effect of
4
disc wear on the flow properties such as flow velocity, porosity,
collision energy Ce, collision frequency Cf, impact energy intensity
2 Ei and power draw Pin. These properties have been found to be use-
ful to describe the flow of grinding media in relation to grinding
0 performance (Jayasundara et al., 2006a, 2010). Collision energy is
-135 -90 -45 0 45 90 135 180 225 defined as 1=2mv 2ij , where m is the mass of particles and
β (deg) v ij ð¼ j~
vi  ~v j jÞ the magnitude of the relative velocity of two collid-
ing particles. The magnitude of the velocity was determined when
Fig. 7. Wear rate on the hole surface as a function of b.
the particle contact is first made. Collision frequency is the number
of collisions per particle per second. By definition, a collision must
(Fig. 6d). The wear of the disc may lead to a structural failure of the come from two particles with a certain distance. Otherwise, they
disc. Since the wear rate and pattern can be estimated, the life span are simply in enduring contact. If the collision gap is not defined
of the disc can be predicted. or set to very close to zero, there may be a large number of colli-
To quantitatively describe the disc wear behaviour, Fig. 7 shows sions with very low collision energies. In order to filter out small
the wear profiles along the angular direction of a disc hole at differ- collisions, it is necessary to define the collision gap in the DEM sim-
ent times. With time progressing, the wear rate of the disc increases, ulation. Here consistent with our previous studies (Jayasundara
while the angle at which the wear rate has the maximum value in- et al., 2006a, 2010), a collision is counted only when two particles
creases. As the holes wear out and become bigger, more particles come to contact from a gap of at least 1% of particle diameter and
are captured, so there are stronger interactions between particles an existing contact between particles is not counted as a collision.
and discs, resulting in an increased wear rate. While the wear pat- Impact energy intensity is defined as Ei = NCfCe, where N is the total
tern is still symmetric to a large degree, the peak shifts to the right. number of particles.
The wear distribution becomes less symmetric with a higher wear Fig. 8 shows the effect of wear after 8 months on the flow prop-
rate occurring in the region 40° < b < 225° and a lower rate occurring erties in terms of particle flow pattern, velocity field and local
in the region 225° < b < 360°. This causes the hole boundary to move porosity (disc rotating clockwise). Different flow patterns are

(a) (b)

velocity (m/s)

porosity

Fig. 8. Snapshot of particle flow pattern (top), and porosity and velocity distribution (bottom) on the radial plane YY0 for: (a) new disc; and (b) worn disc after 8 months.
1592 C.T. Jayasundara et al. / Minerals Engineering 24 (2011) 1586–1594

Fig. 9. Spatial distribution of the local impact energy on the radial plane YY0 (top), and the axial plane XX0 (bottom) for: (a) new disc; and (b) worn disc after 8 months.

(a) (b) 1.2

0.003
Probability distribution

Probability distribution

0.0025 new 1 new

after 8 months after 8 months
0.002 0.8

0.0015 0.6

0.001 0.4

0.0005 0.2

0 0
0 200 400 600 800 0 5 10 15 20 25
-6
C (Hz) C (x10 J)
f e

Fig. 10. For new and worn discs: (a) collision frequency distribution; and (b) collision energy distribution.

observed as a result of different hole geometries. With the new disc, disc to particles is high. As a result, particles gain more kinetic en-
particles rotate from the lower region (about 4 o’clock position) to ergy and centrifuge towards the mill drum.
the upper region (around 11 o’clock). Those particles in the upper Simulation and experimental studies have shown that the im-
region with low centrifugal forces form the cascading flow regime pact energy among particles is related to the grinding rate (Kano
around 2 o’clock position. When the discs are worn, energy transfer and Saito, 1998; Kano et al., 2001; Mori et al., 2004). In fact, our re-
from discs to particles is higher due to large holes. Particles are cent study showed that, dry grinding in a stirred mill studied in
more densely packed and form a solid centrifugally driven layer this paper is a first-order kinetic process with particle sizes, decay-
around the entire perimeter of the mill, creating a large void in ing exponentially with time. The grinding rate is correlated with
the centre. Porosity can be used to quantify the flow structure of the total impact energy (Jayasundara et al., 2010). The above stud-
particles (Yang et al., 2003a; Zhou et al., 2003). The so-called local ies indicate the importance of impact energy in prediction of grind-
porosity is used in this work, which is achieved by dividing the cal- ing rate. Fig. 9 shows the spatial distributions of impact energy in
culation domain into a series of spherical cells of two particle diam- the radial and axial planes. In the radial plane, both systems show a
eters in size and the porosity is calculated for each cell. The results ring of high impact energy region near the holes. The worn disc
at different times are collected and averaged to obtain the time- shows a wider energy ring near the holes, compared to that of
averaged value. The spatial distribution of porosity also indicates the new disc due to more particles interact with the disc. There-
that when increasing the hole size, high porosity regions are devel- fore, higher grinding rates can be expected with the worn disc. In
oped in the mill centre. This is because, with large holes, as more the axial direction, both systems show high impact energies close
particles are captured by the rotating holes, energy transfer from to discs near the holes.
 C.T. Jayasundara et al. / Minerals Engineering 24 (2011) 1586–1594 1593

P Finnie model is a promising technique to predict the wear where

100
impact damage is dominant. Further studies are necessary to study
wear due to abrasion.
80
P and E (W)

Acknowledgments
i

60
The authors would like to thank the Australian Research Council
E and Xstrata Technology for providing the financial support for this
i
40 work. The permission granted by Xstrata Technology to publish
this paper is gratefully acknowledged.

20
0 2 4 6 8 References
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