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Particuology 6 (2008) 419–444

Assessing mixing characteristics of particle-mixing

and granulation devices
Paul W. Cleary ∗ , Matthew D. Sinnott
CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences, Private Bag 33, Clayton South 3168, Australia
Received 1 June 2008; accepted 15 July 2008

Abstract
The mixing of particulates such as powders is an important process in many industries including pharmaceuticals, plastics, household products
(such as detergents) and food processing. The quality of products depends on the degree of mixing of their constituent materials which in turn
depends on both geometric design and operating conditions. Unfortunately, due to lack of understanding of the interaction between mixer geometry
and the granular material, limited progress has been made in optimizing mixer design. The discrete element method (DEM) is a computational
technique that allows particle systems to be simulated and mixing to be predicted. Simulation is an effective way of acquiring information on
the performance of different mixers that is difficult and/or expensive to obtain using traditional experimental approaches. Here we demonstrate
how DEM can be used to unravel flow dynamics and assess mixing in several different types of devices. These devices used for mixing and/or
granulation of particulates, are classified broadly as gravity controlled, bladed and high shear. We also explore the role of particle shape in mixing
performance and use DEM to test whether Froude number scaling is suitable for predicting scale performance of rotating mixers.
© 2008 Chinese Society of Particuology and Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. All
rights reserved.

Keywords: Discrete element modelling; Mixing; Mixers; Blenders; Granulation; Scale up; Particle shape

1. Introduction limited progress has been made in optimizing mixer design.

The mixing of granular systems such as powders is a funda-
mental operation, important for a range of industries including
pharmaceuticals, plastics, house-hold products (such as deter-
gents) and food processing. The quality of products depends on
the degree of mixing of their constituent materials. However, the
homogeneity of the final mixture relies on the nature of the mix-
ing procedure used. Any systematic mixing process is incapable
of creating a completely random mixture since the likelihood of
it re-ordering the particles increases with the degree of mixing.
Eventually an equilibrium point is reached where the mixing
and de-mixing mechanisms are in balance and there is a natu-
ral cessation of mixing. For different devices, the equilibrium
states will depend on both geometric design and operating con-
ditions. Unfortunately, due to a lack of understanding of the
interaction between mixer geometry and the granular material,
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 3 95458005; fax: +61 3 95458080.
E-mail address: Paul.Cleary@csiro.au (P.W. Cleary).
Many challenges remain including:
• scale up from laboratory scale,
• robustness of performance to changing conditions (typically
fill level and speed),
• how the mixer will perform for new materials or new combi-
nations of materials, and
• increasing the extent of mixing as quality requirements on
products become more demanding.
To date, there has been a great deal of focus on studies of
granular flows but only moderate attention has been devoted
to granular mixing. A homogeneous mixture is not a guaran-
teed end-state for the operation of any mixing device, since the
process involves complex three-dimensional flows generating
regions of high and low mobility. Differences in particle size,
shape and density may in fact promote segregation leading to
self-organisation and pattern formation. Historically, the oppor-
tunity to study flows in granular mixing has been hampered by
the lack of suitable means for visualizing them. However, recent

1674-2001/$ – see inside back cover © 2008 Chinese Society of Particuology and Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.partic.2008.07.014
420 P.W. Cleary, M.D. Sinnott / Particuology 6 (2008) 419–444
advances in discrete element modeling (DEM) have resulted in
this method becoming a useful simulation tool that can provide
detailed information not easily measured during experiments.
There are many challenges in developing computational
models for studying granular mixing in commercial devices.
Production-scale rotary batch mixers typically have capacities
of hundreds of litres (and can range up to 20,000 l) filled with
wet/cohesive, non-spherical particles of sizes ranging down to
tens of microns. DEM models of granular mixing are mostly
small-scale laboratory mixers acting on materials of dry spher-
ical particles. It has been shown that mixing rates for dry, free
flowing materials in rotating drums are independent of rota-
tional speed (Sudah, Coffin-Beach, & Muzzio, 2002), whereas
for cohesive materials, a higher rotational speed results in more
rapid mixing (Chaudhuri, Mehrotra, Muzzio, & Tomassone,
2006). Scale-up is still poorly understood for the majority
of mixing devices. Ding, Forster, Seville, and Parker (2001)
describe scaling relationships for rotary drums, but the develop-
ment of larger, industrial-scale models are needed to determine
scaling laws for other devices. With the maturing of DEM simu-
lation, it is now becoming possible to run simulations of millions
of particles with complex shapes and inter-particle cohesive
forces in tolerable times on single processor, desktop computers.
Particle morphology (shape) can vary dramatically with feed
material and is known to be of critical importance in obtaining
quantitative accuracy for the modelling of mixing in rotating
drums (Cleary & Metcalfe, 2002; Cleary, Metcalfe, & Liffman,
1998). Spherical particles have low resistance to shear compared
to more angular or blocky particles. This can be a major prob-
lem for correctly predicting mixing rates, where the flow regime
and mixing patterns for realistic particle assemblies can depart
significantly from that of spheres. Angularity and aspect ratio
are important parameters for characterising the effects of shape
on particulate flows and microstructures. Angularity leads to
tighter packing as neighbours lose their ability to freely roll
over each other. Elongated particles, with high aspect ratio,
can lead to complicated interlocking of the microstructure and
restrict the flow; as well as generate complex force networks
within a granular system. Rolling and sliding friction coeffi-
cients are often applied to modify the flow dynamics in such
systems in order to mimic the flow behaviour of particles of
more complex shape. However this simplistic approach is unable
to correctly predict a number of important aspects of assem-
blies of non-spherical particles such as packing fractions, and
the extent of dilation of a granular bed in regions of high shear
(which can affect the rate of percolation of fine particles). Under-
standing the key role that shape plays in determining packing
efficiency, strength of a microstructure, flowability and seg-
regation is important for predicting mixer performance for a
given granular material. Due to the computational expense in
contact detection for complex shaped particles, existing three-
dimensional DEM models of granular mixing generally only
use spherical particles (Bertrand, Leclaire, & Levecque, 2005).
To the best of our knowledge, only a single three-dimensional
study of granular mixing involving non-spherical particle shape
in DEM has been reported in the literature so far (Sinnott &
Cleary, 2005).
Mixing devices vary considerably in their design and
intended application, and are operated in either continuous or
batch modes. Continuous operation requires the mixing time be
matched to the residence time of particles flowing through the
device in order for the product exiting from the device to be
adequately mixed. This places a limit on the throughput of such
devices. Devices intended for batch operation continue mixing
until a desired mixing state is reached. Common batch mixers
include rotary mixers like the bin and V-blenders, as well as
high-shear mixers. Typically the duration of a batch mixing pro-
cess is chosen in advance based on historical experience. Mixing
quality can be checked by sampling after the mixing process has
ended, but it is expensive to return a batch for additional mixing
if the quality is not adequate. Often for new products or when
conditions such as humidity lead to variation of the cohesiveness,
the required mixing duration cannot be adequately estimated in
advance.
Granulation refers to any process which results in the growth
of size of particulate aggregates due to the formation of inter-
particle bonds (e.g. liquid cohesion, sintering or crystallization).
Its use in process industries is widespread, with examples includ-
ing the production of tablets in the pharmaceutical industry,
the manufacture of fertilizer pellets, agglomeration of wood
fibers in the paper industry and sintered iron pelletization in
the steel industry. Other industries in which granulation has
critical importance include the manufacture of food additives
(especially phosphates) and food products (such a breakfast
cereals), soap/detergent production, minerals processing and the
production of specialty plastics.
“Wet granulation” involves a liquid binder sprayed onto
the surface of a granular bed. If this occurs during mixing,
then the binder is able to penetrate into the granular mate-
rial. Under these circumstances liquid bridges form between
particles and thus provide a cohesive force that allows the for-
mation and growth of aggregates. The equipment used to mix
the granular material and liquid binder varies between indus-
tries and applications, but can be broadly classified as tumbling
agglomerators (e.g. dish pelletizers and drum granulators) or
mixer-agglomerators (e.g. paddle mixers, plough share mixers
and peg mixers). From a process-engineering perspective, the
control of wet granulation is focused on manipulating the oper-
ating and design variables that influence the final properties of
the aggregates. These include size distribution, aggregate poros-
ity, shape and chemical composition. In general, these properties
will be determined by the nature of interactions between parti-
cles and the distribution of liquid binder. Since these factors
are essentially determined by the granular flow during mixing,
it is reasonable to expect that identifying means for control-
ling wet granulation will follow from an understanding of the
flows.
In this paper, we present DEM models for several types of
mixers as summarized in Fig. 1. They are classified into three
groups:
1. gravity-controlled mixers,
2. stirred mixers, and
3. high shear (or high energy) mixers.
 P.W. Cleary, M.D. Sinnott / Particuology 6 (2008) 419–444
Fig. 1. Summary of the mixing devices presented in this paper and classified into batch/continuous operation and gravity/agitator driven mixing.
Devices that use gravity to drive mixing include rotary
devices such as drum blenders (Finnie, Kruyt, Ye, Zeilstra, &
Kuipers, 2005; Kwapinska, Saage, & Tsotsas, 2006; Metcalfe,
Shinbrot, McCarthy, & Ottino, 1995), bin blenders (Arratia,
Duong, Muzzio, Godbole, Lange, et al. 2006; Arratia, Duong,
Muzzio, Godbole, & Reynolds, 2006; Lemieux, Bertrand,
Chaouki, & Gosselin, 2007), pan granulators (Morton & Cleary,
2002), and V-blenders (Kuo et al., 2002; Kuo, Knight, Parker,
& Seville, 2005; Lemieux et al., 2007, 2008). Stirred mixers
make use of a horizontally or vertically aligned impeller to agi-
tate the granular bed. There are many agitator types used in
industrial practice with only a small number of these having
been investigated using DEM simulation. The variants of stirred
mixer examined so far include plough share mixers (Cleary,
Laurent, & Bridgewater, 2002; Laurent & Cleary, submitted
for publication), peg mixers (Morton & Cleary, 2002), pad-
dle mixers, and ribbon blenders (Bertrand et al., 2005). High
shear mixers are a special class of stirred mixer that use a very
high speed impeller to work the granular material (Kuo, Knight,
Parker, Adams, & Seville, 2004; Sinnott & Cleary, 2003, 2005;
Stewart, Bridgewater, & Parker, 2001; Stewart, Bridgewater,
Zhou, & Yu, 2001). Stewart, Bridgewater, Zhou, et al. (2001)
have made good use of PEPT measurements to validate their
DEM models. Zhou, Yu, Stewart, and Bridgewater (2004) have
also identified micro-dynamic variables related to flow struc-
tures for high shear mixers.
2. Simulation technique
2.1. DEM method
The discrete element method is a numerical technique used to
predict the behaviour of collision dominated particle flows. Each
particle in the flow is tracked and all collisions between parti-
cles and between particles and boundaries are modelled. The
particles are allowed to overlap and the extent of overlap is used
in conjunction with a contact force law to give instantaneous
421
forces from knowledge of the current positions, orientations,
velocities and spins of the particles. Here we used the simplest
of the force laws which is the linear spring-dashpot model. The
overlap x scaled by the spring constant k provides a repul-
sive force. The dashpot contributes an inelastic component to
the collision. The damping coefficient C is determined from the
specified coefficient of restitution for each combination of mate-
rials colliding. The spring and dashpot together define the normal
force:
Fn = −k x + Cvn , (1)
where vn is the normal component of the relative velocity at the
contact point. In similar way, the tangential force has an incre-
mental spring based on the integrated tangential displacement
and a dashpot for inelastic dissipation. The tangential force is
then subject to the sliding Coulomb friction limit to give:
  
Ft = min μFn , kvt dt + Cvt (2)
where vt is the tangential component of the relative velocity at
the contact point and μ is the coefficient of friction. A general
review of DEM and its variants can be found in Barker (1994).
The essential elements of the algorithm for the simulation
procedure are
1. A search grid regularly maintains a near-neighbour interac-
tion list for all particle pairs and particle-boundary pairs that
might participate in a collision in that given period.
2. For each timestep, this list is used to identify all collisions
involving particles and boundary elements. The forces on
particle pairs and boundaries are evaluated using the contact
force model.
3. All the pairwise collision forces and torques are summed to
give net forces and torques. Forces from other forms of inter-
action can also be added in this step. Newton’s equations of
motion and the matching kinematic equations are then inte-
grated to give the changes in the position, speed, orientation
422 P.W. Cleary, M.D. Sinnott / Particuology 6 (2008) 419–444
and spin of the particles in response to these net forces and
torques.
Steps 2 and 3 are repeated sequentially stepping the system
state forward in time until the search information is no longer
valid. Then a new search (step 1) is performed to update the
interaction list. This DEM has been used to model many indus-
trial granular flows (see Cleary, 2004; Cleary & Sawley, 2002
for examples). More details of the implementation can be found
in Cleary (1998).
DEM simulations of real materials require more complex par-
ticle shape descriptions. A flexible class of shapes that balance
increased realism with acceptable loss of computational speed is
the super-quadric (SQ). This enables the angularity and varying
principle axis aspect ratios to be included in the modelling allow-
ing more realistic flow predictions. Cleary and Metcalfe (2002)
showed that the inclusion of shape using SQ particles was able
to give DEM quantitative accuracy in predicting mixing in rotat-
ing drums. These shapes were first used in two dimensions by
Williams and Pentland (1992) and in three dimensions by Cleary
(2004) which contains a number of three-dimensional examples.
They are described by
 x m  y m  z m
+ + =1 (3)
a b c
The resultant particles are somewhere between an ellipsoid
and a rectangular box with the angularity/smoothness of the cor-
ners controlled by the choice of m (with m = 2 being ellipsoidal
and large m being a box) and the aspect ratios being controlled
by the ratios of the semi-major axes (b/a and c/a).
2.2. Measuring mixing in DEM
Mixing of particulates can be measured in a number of ways.
Two methods that are very suitable for use in DEM for predicting
mixing and segregation in granular systems are described in
Cleary et al. (1998) and Cleary (1998). They are
• Colour centroids and
• Mixing measure.
Both are used in this paper and are described next.
2.2.1. Colour centroids
Particles can be coloured into groups reflecting their initial
positions and the nature of the mixing that is to be measured.
The distance of the centroids for each of the different colours
from the overall center of mass then characterises the degree
of mixing of that group of particles. Initially, all the particles
belonging to each colour lie in separate regions and the centroid
locations are well separated. As the particles mix, some cross
from one region to another and the centroids move closer to the
overall centroid. The differences in the centroid locations from
the overall centroid can be normalised by their initial values
to be unity. If the particles become perfectly mixed then all
the normalised centroid differences become zero. The centroid
components can often be fitted by an exponentially declining
sinusoid with the exponent characterising the rate of mixing and
the period of oscillation relating to some form of characteristic
turnover of the particles in the mixer which is very dependent
on the nature of the flow pattern. This method was originally
used by Metcalfe et al. (1995) to experimentally measure mixing
in a rotating drum. It was then used to assess mixing in DEM
simulations of the same system in Cleary et al. (1998).
2.2.2. Particle mixing measure
The method is flexible and can be used with both continuous
and discrete particle distributions. A three-dimensional grid is
constructed over all the particles. Local averages of a selected
property (e.g. mass, density, diameter, colour) are calculated
using all particles in the region centered at each grid point. The
size of the averaging cell is typically chosen to be fives times
the average particle diameter in order to ensure that the local
averages are statistically meaningful. These local averages at
each of the grid points are then collected to form a probability
distribution for the chosen property. The choice of a multiple
of five means that in 3D there are typically 50–100 particles
used in the local averages, giving an estimate of the standard
deviation of the noise in the local means of 0.3 of these means.
Therefore the estimate of the local mean is, to a 95% confidence
level, within ±0.9x true local mean of the true mean. This is
sufficiently accurate for the current purpose and balances the
need to have good local estimates of the mean with the need to
have sufficient independent data points to accurately characterise
the distribution of local means.
The mean, standard deviation, and coefficient of variation η,
(defined as mean divided by standard deviation) are then cal-
culated for the entire distribution of local means at each time.
Ideal limits are calculated for the coefficient of variation for the
fully segregated and fully mixed states, ηs and ηr respectively
(see Cleary, 1998 for details). This allows η to be normalised
and provide a single mixing measure in the range of 0–1. Since
this quantity evolves with time (reflecting mixing and segrega-
tion processes) it is not only a good indicator of the quality of
the mixture but also a natural measure of the mixing rate. This
mixing/segregation measurement process is described in more
detail in Cleary (1998).
3. Gravity controlled mixers
Gravity controlled mixers are devices whose primary mode
of flow is avalanching down free surfaces of a bed of particles.
Mixing is due to local mixing in this avalanching layer and is
restricted by the rate at which material can be supplied to the
source of the avalanches. Different devices use different machine
geometries and different motions to periodically or continuously
create opportunities for surface avalanche mixing.
3.1. Drum mixer
Drum mixers can be configured to operate in both contin-
uous and batch modes. Here we predict the particle flow in a
laboratory scale continuous drum mixer. It has a 250-mm inter-
nal diameter and is 500 mm long. The feed end on this mixer
 P.W. Cleary, M.D. Sinnott / Particuology 6 (2008) 419–444
Fig. 2. Steady-state motion in a laboratory scale continuous drum mixer with
particles colored by speed (top) oblique view of the entire drum contents, and
(bottom) an axial sectioned view (at z = 500 mm which is immediately before
the conical outlet).
consists of a flat plate and a horizontal feed port with an inner
diameter of 55 mm. The discharge was modeled as a convergent
conical section, reducing from 250 mm to 155 mm. The drum
was inclined at 7.5◦ and rotates in an anti-clockwise direction
at 34 rpm. Simulations were run for a time corresponding to
approximately 15 revolutions to allow material introduced at
the feed end to be transported to the discharge end. The feed
rate was chosen to ensure that the mass of granular material was
consistently around 8.0 kg corresponding to a fill level of about
30%. The particle diameters in the system ranged from 2.51 mm
to 8.82 mm with density 2000 kg/m3 . The particle coefficient
of restitution was 0.3 and the friction coefficient was 0.75. A
spring stiffness of 5000 N/m was sufficient to produce the target
average overlap of less than 1%.
A steady flow pattern was established after about four revo-
lutions and is shown in Fig. 2. As might be expected the axial
flow is from the inlet towards the conical discharge. The cross-
sectional view indicates that the granular material is lifted to a
shoulder position with a steady angle of approximately 32◦ to
the horizontal. Material at the free surface then tumbles from
423
the shoulder (highest) position to the toe (lowest) position. For
granular motion in tumbling cylinders, such motion is commonly
referred to as the “rolling” regime. Given that the rotation speed
simulated corresponds to 40% of the critical speed at which cen-
trifuging occurs, this relatively gentle motion is to be expected.
In addition to indicating the gentle rolling nature of the sur-
face flow, the cross-sectional view shown in Fig. 2 also shows
a slow moving interior core around which the granular material
rotates. The regions at the periphery of this core correspond to
regions where fast moving particles are able to slide past layers
of slower moving particles. Such conditions produce significant
shear. In mixing and granulation processes, this shear will lead
to attrition of particles or aggregates or the re-distribution of
inter-particle bonds. Hence, it is expected that the outer limits
of the slow moving core will be a region in which some attrition
occurs and aggregate density (and porosity) is modified.
Fig. 3 shows the way in which new feed material flows
through the existing particle bed in such a continuously fed
mixer. The new feed particles are coloured red and the exist-
ing bed is coloured light blue. The feed stream falls into the
bed a small distance from the end of the drum trapping a small
length of existing material behind the stream. Once the stream
contacts the surface it avalanches down the free surface and is
dragged under the surface by the drum rotation. The red particles
then become visible again at the shoulder a small axial distance
further down the drum. They then avalanche down the surface
reaching and then blending into the original feed stream on the
surface. The interface between the coloured materials in Fig. 3b
and c is almost planar with red material to on the feed side and
blue predominantly on the discharge side. The interface plane
is modestly angled with the red material at the toe moderately
in advance of the red material at the shoulder. The feed material
forms a plug that moves at nearly uniform speed along the drum.
There is a modest degree of mixing across the interface which is
purely diffusive in nature. After about 8 s (or 4.5 revolutions of
the drum) the new feed material reaches the discharge and starts
to leave the drum. In the last frame of Fig. 3, the red particles
densely fill the entire drum except for the small band of blue
trapped against the feed end and a scattering of blue particles
mixed with the currently discharging red particles.
This uniform progression of feed particles is clearly identifi-
able when examining the residence time distribution of the feed
which is shown in Fig. 4a. This distribution is calculated over
15 revolutions of the drum. The distribution is essentially uni-
modal, with a dominant peak at around 7.5 s with some spread
from 6 s to 10 s. This shows that the motion in the drum mixer
approaches that of plug-flow. An important contributor to the
modest variation in residence time is the size of the particles.
Smaller particles percolate quickly through the surface layers
and migrate towards the center of the bed. The amount of axial
dispersion depends on the distance down the avalanching sur-
face that a particle can travel (Cleary, 2006). So smaller particles
can be expected to travel with lower axial speeds compared to
larger particles which can avalanche all the way down to the
toe region and therefore produce the largest axial migrations per
cycle. Close inspection of the animations of these drum simu-
lations show that the leading particles are all larger ones. The
424 P.W. Cleary, M.D. Sinnott / Particuology 6 (2008) 419–444

Fig. 3. Progression of feed particles (red/dark grey) from entry to discharge in a laboratory scale continuous drum mixer through a pre-existing bed (shown as light
blue/light grey particles).

smaller particles have longer residence times (up to around 10 s)
and the largest particles have smallest residence times (down to
6 s). It is clear from these results that the drum is actually quite
poor as a mixer with the particles flowing as a fairly uniform
plug. The small compositional change is actually produced by
size segregation in the avalanching zone, which in turn mod-
erately influences the residence time. Segregation in mixers is
typically not an attractive attribute.
In addition to the residence time distributions discussed
above, it is useful to collect information about the energy dissi-
pation associated with collisions. This is particularly important
when the drum is used as a granulator. Then the intensity of
collisions is responsible for breaking up granules and allow-
ing binder to be transferred between particles. Fig. 4b shows the
energy spectra for all collisions and the contribution for particles
within the diameter range 5.3–6.2 mm. This spectra shows the

Fig. 4. (Left) Residence time distribution of red particles over 15 revolutions of the drum mixer and (right) collision energy spectra for all collisions over the same
period.
 P.W. Cleary, M.D. Sinnott / Particuology 6 (2008) 419–444
Fig. 5. Particle motion in a laboratory dish granulator, (left) particles colored by velocity (with blue being slow and red being fast) and (right) distribution of the red
feed material in the original blue bed of particles.
most frequent collisions occur at the lower energy levels, in the
range 10−6 − 10−5 J. At such energies, it is reasonable to expect
that aggregate breakage will be minimal and that the primary
effect of collisions will be to bring particles into contact. Hence,
for the conditions considered here, the main factors affecting
aggregate size are expected to be the particles’ residence time
and the distribution of liquid binder. The weak collisional inten-
sities will also limit the ability of this device to operate as a
granulator.
3.2. Pan mixer
A more complex mixer, often used for granulation, is a pan
mixer. This consists of a shallow pan or dish with a circular flat
bottom and a low surrounding wall. It is held at a constant angle
and moved with a swirling motion, in much the manner used
in ‘panning for gold’. Feed material is poured onto the mixer
near the top. The particles follow complex swirling trajectories
and form a bed built up against the lower lip of the pan. New
feed mixes with the old feed in the bed. This raises the bed level
and leads to discharge by overflowing near the lowest point of
the pan. In this case, the pan is 500 mm diameter and has a
wall height of 100 mm. The pan has an inclination of 45◦ and
is rotated at 45 rpm in an anti-clockwise direction. A steady-
stream of material is dropped onto the pan around the one to
two o’clock position. The feed rate is dynamic and matches the
discharge rate leading to a constant bed mass of 9.0 kg. The feed
particle diameter varied from 2.5 mm to 8.8 mm with density
2000 kg/m3 . The particle coefficient of restitution was 0.3 and
the friction coefficient was 0.75. The spring stiffness used was
106 N/m.
Fig. 5 shows the particle distribution inside the pan, coloured
both by velocity and by whether it is feed material. They are
consistent with the generally observed behavior of industrial
dish granulators. Material in the region of the 4 o’clock position
passes over the granulator wall, forming a discharge stream.
Apart from the incoming feed stream, the highest velocities
425
occur at roughly the 8 o’clock position where the bed is most
dilute and most mobile. In a granulation application, this is the
region in which liquid binder would typically be sprayed. From
an operational sense, this would seem appropriate since there
will be a high frequency of high-energy particle–particle colli-
sions. This is likely to lead to efficient binder transport as fluid is
exchanged during the formation and breakage of liquid bridges.
Fig. 5b shows the particles coloured by whether they are new
feed (red) or existing bed material (blue). The red material has
filled a coherent band from the feed location down to around
the 7 o’clock location. This indicates that the particle motion is
essentially a uniform plug flow down the middle and left side of
the pan. The flow behaviour for the pan mixer does not suggest
that this device does a particularly large amount of mixing.
3.3. V-blender
A V-blender uses a V shaped mixing vessel for batch mixing.
Each arm of the V has a cylindrical cross-sectional shape and
there is typically an access port at the bottom of the V for filling
and discharge of the particulates. This is sealed during mixing
operation. The blender has a horizontal shaft attached to the V
and the blender rotates around this shaft. The configuration is
symmetric to reflection in a vertical plane through the V. The
particulates start in the two ends of the blender and during the
first half revolution the particles flow down towards the vertex
of the V with mixing occurring in the shearing bulk flow. In the
second half of a revolution the particles flow back away from
the vertex towards the ends of the arms of the V producing a
further increment of mixing. This batch mixing process contin-
ues for a set number of revolutions with increments of mixing
occurring for each half revolution as particles flow alternatively
away and then towards the ends. The basic flow in a V-blender
has previously been studied using DEM by Kuo et al. (2002)
and is therefore not described here. They validated their DEM
models against positron emission particle tracking (PEPT) mea-
surements and observed that the flow exhibited two phases: a
426 P.W. Cleary, M.D. Sinnott / Particuology 6 (2008) 419–444
separation phase as material splits into two streams and flows
along the arms of the V-blender; and a recombination phase
where the return streams come together at the bottom of the
blender. In particular, they showed that mass transfer from one
arm to the other is more likely to occur during separation of the
streams. From a pure experimental study, Kuo et al. (2005) con-
sidered the similarity between V-blenders and tumbling drums
in that they both have a surface flow regime and a regime of
solid body motion. Circulation in each arm occurs with an inten-
sity that increases proportionally with the square of the angular
speed, and decreases with increasing fill level from 10% to 46
%. Mixing has also previously been studied for small-scale lab-
oratory V-blenders by Lemieux et al. (2007, 2008) who showed
the evolution of mixing changes for different loading profiles
and for different rotational speeds. For their mixing measure,
they have used the relative standard deviation, a metric com-
monly used in the pharmaceutical industry. This is the standard
deviation for a completely random binary mixture.
Now that DEM simulations can be performed for particles
numbers well beyond one million on single CPU desktop com-
puters, a critical issue that can be explored with DEM is the
question of how mixing scales up from the laboratory scale to
process scale. Here we start to explore how DEM can provide
information about this for the V-blender. The laboratory scale
blender used here has an internal volume of 1.864 l with a vertex
angle of 75◦ . It starts with the discharge port at the bottom of
the V pointing down and the cylindrical arms pointing upward.
It rotates around a horizontal axis that is mid-way between the
lower vertex and the tops of the arms. The blender is scaled
through two orders of magnitude in volume and the mixing is
assessed at each scale. The largest of the blenders considered
here has a volume of 210 l which is suitable for 100 kg batch
blending and is of genuine operational size. DEM modelling of
industrial scale mixers for coarser materials (mm scale) is now
feasible, but mixing of finer powders (10 ␮m to 1 mm) is still
not feasible at the industrial scale.
Here we are interested in the mixing of coarser mm scale non-
cohesive particulates. These are representative of particle sizes
in foods, some household products and plastics feed stocks. The
particles used here have a mean size of 2.75 mm with a range of
0.25 mm above or below this size. The same particle sizes are
used in all the different scale mixers. The solid packing fraction
is 0.5564. The particle density was 1500 kg/m3 and the blenders
were filled to 50.1% by volume. For the laboratory scale mixer
the mass of particles was therefore 0.78 kg and for the largest
scale blender it was 78 kg. The physical length of blender and
the number of particles in the model for each blender scale are
given in Table 1. The coefficient of restitution was 0.7 for the
particle–particle collisions and 0.85 for particle–wall (steel) col-
lisions, while the friction coefficient was 0.5 for particle–particle
contacts and 0.4 for the particle–wall ones.
The Froude number is the ratio of the centrifugal force result-
ing from the rotation to gravity. The laboratory scale blender is
operated at 30 rpm. This corresponds to a Froude number of
about 0.1 which corresponds to gentle avalanching flow. The
gradually changing angle of the blender causes the particles to
exceed the angle of failure of the particulate material leading
Table 1
Model parameters for the scaled up V-blender.
Blender Particle Length of Rotation speed for
volume (L) numbers blender (m) Froude scaling (rpm)
1.86 48,500 0.230 30.00
5.88 153,000 0.338 24.76
18.6 485,000 0.500 20.44
58.8 1,530,000 0.727 16.87
186.0 4,850,000 1.067 13.93
to failure and avalanching down the free surface of the particle
bed. In order to compare the mixing at different scales, a blender
speed scale up rule needs to be applied. The most common one is
to keep the Froude number constant. Here we scale the blender
speeds in this way so that we can evaluate the appropriateness
of this scale up law. The rotational speeds at each scale are also
given in Table 1. A spring stiffness of 1000 N/m was used in all
these simulations giving average overlaps of 0.16% of the parti-
cle diameter for the laboratory scale and 0.4% for the industrial
scale.
Fig. 6 shows the progress of mixing in the laboratory scale
V-blender. The particles start in a settled pile above the vertex
of the blender which is oriented downwards. The particles are
coloured into four vertical strata according to their axial position
across the width of the blender. This colouring scheme allows
assessment of mixing within each of the two cylindrical sec-
tions and across the central plane of symmetry. The strata each
contain 25% of the particles so they are different widths (due
to the difference in the bed depth along the sloping lower sur-
face). As the blender rotates slowly around its horizontal axis
the free surface changes its angle until it reaches the angle of
failure of the material which then avalanches down the slope set-
tling at the angle of repose. Each increment of rotation causes
some particles to exceed the angle of failure leading to contin-
uous avalanching from across the high side of the blender. In
the first half revolution the avalanching flow is directed down
into the angled cylindrical sections of the blender shell. These
progressively fill and the charge mass is almost separated into
two masses with only a thin tongue of material across the V
shaped boundary between sections of the chamber. After 1 s, the
mixer has become completely inverted. In the second half of the
revolution particles flow down the slope in the direction of rota-
tion but also converge back towards the middle of the blender
as the particles pack into the apex region. The mixer continues
this flow pattern and each revolution produces an increment of
mixing.
The distribution of particles is shown after one revolution
(2 s) in Fig. 6b. The particle bed does not return to the initial
position because of the angle of repose free surface with par-
ticles higher at the back than at the front. The first revolution
has also substantially re-arranged the strata. The combination of
the free surface avalanching in the direction of rotation with the
cyclic axial flow induced by the angles of the cylindrical cham-
ber sections produces a complex circulatory flow within each
section. On the left, both the blue and red particles now stretch
from the center to the far left with the red occupying the rear of
 P.W. Cleary, M.D. Sinnott / Particuology 6 (2008) 419–444 427

the blender and the blue material at the front. This is in sharp
contrast to the initial state where the particles were coloured
purely in axial strata. There is only modest diffusive mixing of
the colours along the interfaces. After two revolutions (4 s) the
particles occupy the same position, but the red and blue sets of
particles have changed their position from that after one revolu-
tion. The red material is predominantly on the top and the blue
is now underneath. There is clearly a circulatory component to
the flow with periodicity that is slower than the rotation speed
of the blender. After three revolutions, the blue is more towards
the front and is concentrated towards the outside and near the
centerline. After four revolutions the blue material is towards the
front with the red predominantly at the back. This state is very
similar to that observed after one revolution. This continues for
very large numbers of revolutions but becomes less distinct as
the colours intermix. The slow circulation of the colour groups
within each cylindrical section means that the mixing flow has
a longer-term convective component which is quite complex in
nature.
The continuous avalanching flow down the free surface and
the cyclic axial flow generate diffusive mixing. This can be
clearly discerned by the steady blurring of the interfaces between

Fig. 6. Mixing in a laboratory scale V-blender. Vertical strata show the nature of the mixing. Longer term mixing in a laboratory scale V-blender.
428 P.W. Cleary, M.D. Sinnott / Particuology 6 (2008) 419–444

Fig. 6. (Continued)

the colours. The migration of individual particles from one the opportunity to become more mixed declines as the mate-
region to an adjacent one is essentially a random walk type rial becomes more uniform and because the mixing on each side
behaviour and leads to steadily increasing mixing. The convec- becomes complete by 40 revolutions leaving only the slower dif-
tive transport accelerates the mixing by stretching and folding fusive mixing across the plane of symmetry after that. By 120
the interface and bringing new unmixed material close to other revolutions the material is 80% mixed. It is clear that to become
unmixed material allowing the diffusive mixing (which is inher- fully mixed (the asymptotic state in this mixer) will take a sig-
ently a short scale phenomena) to be more effective. nificant amount more time. Therefore for batch processing, a
By 40 revolutions (80 s) the red and blue material on the left target level of mixture quality is selected and the required mix-
are very close to perfectly mixed and the green and white in the ing time to reach the desired state can then be determined from
right are also almost perfectly mixed. But there is only mild mix- this graph. The very slow mixing in the later stages can poten-
ing of materials from one side of the blender into the other. The
symmetric nature of the blender geometry creates a symmetric
flow pattern which makes it difficult to transfer particles across
the plane of symmetry. The mixing across this interface is purely
by diffusion as the material avalanches down the free surface of
the rotating bed. Diffusive mixing is much slower, so the mixing
across the two sides is very slow in comparison to the mixing
within each side. By 120 revolutions (240 s), the mixture has
finally attained a reasonably good degree of mixing. This means
that the axial mixing between sides takes more than four times
longer to become well mixed than is required for material on
each side of the blender.
Fig. 7 shows the evolution of the state of mixing for the
laboratory scale V-blender. This mixing rate (given by the gradi-
ent of this curve) is initially reasonably rapid and then declines
steadily over 120 revolutions. The mixing rate declines because Fig. 7. Evolution of the state of mixing for the laboratory scale V-blender.
 P.W. Cleary, M.D. Sinnott / Particuology 6 (2008) 419–444 429

Fig. 8. Mixing in V-blenders as the size of the blenders is increased: (a) laboratory scale, (b) scaled up by 3.16, (c) scaled up by 10, (d) scaled up by 10 in a different
phase of rotation, and (e) scaled up by 31.6, and (f) initial strata scaled up by 100.

tially be improved by removing the symmetry of the flow. Some
form of geometrical change that generates exchange of particles
(even mild) between the sides of the blender will significantly
increase the mixing rate since the cross-chamber mixing will
then have a convective component which will be much faster
than the currently used diffusive mechanism.
Fig. 8 shows the particles in V-blenders at different stages
of mixing and different orientations for the different scales of
mixers considered here. At the laboratory scale the particles are
relatively large and visible. As the mixer scale increases the
particles are proportionally smaller. For the 186 l chamber, it
has become hard to distinguish individual particles amongst the
4.85 million that are present. The cost of the computation rises
with increasing scale both because the particle numbers increase
but also because the speed of revolution decreases in order to
maintain the Froude number.
The particles in the 5.88 l mixer are shown in Fig. 8b after
34 revolutions (83 s). The mixing is substantially advanced for
materials on either side of the mixer but there is only weak
mixing across the plane of symmetry. The number of revolu-
430 P.W. Cleary, M.D. Sinnott / Particuology 6 (2008) 419–444
Table 2
Mixing states for the different size mixers measured after three revolutions and
the ratio of the mixing rate to that of the laboratory scale.
Blender volume (L) Mixing measure after Ratio of mixing rate
three revolutions to the lab scale
1.86 7.2% 1.00
5.88 5.5% 0.76
18.6 4.2% 0.58
58.8 3.4% 0.47
tions is similar to that of the laboratory scale mixer in Fig. 8a
(37 revolutions) and the degree of homogeneity of red/blue and
white/green are similar but there is clearly less diffusive mixing
across the mid-plane. The mixing state is calculated in each case
using the mixing measure described in Section 2.2. To facilitate
comparison of the different scales we characterize the mixing
by the magnitude of the mixing after three revolutions for each
case. The extent of mixing and the ratio of this measure to that
of the laboratory scale mixer are given in Table 2. The rate of
mixing for the 5.88 l mixer is only 0.76 of the laboratory scale.
The particles are shown after 9.2 and 9.3 revolutions for the
18.6 l mixer in Fig. 8c and d. The bed is around 10% mixed with
the original colour sets still appearing to be reasonably coherent
but with moderate diffusive mixing. The modest volume of red
particles that have crossed the mid-plane (Fig. 8d) are concen-
trated along the angled lower wall of the right chamber of the
mixer. The blue particles are heavily concentrated on the outside
of the left side and the white on the outside of the right side. The
mixing percentage after three revolutions is 4.2% which is only
0.58 of the laboratory scale. The particles are shown after four
revolutions in Fig. 8e for the 58.8 l mixer. As for the previous
case the blue and white particles are located at the outside of the
left and right sides of the mixer and almost entirely at the top.
It is interesting to note a narrow band of green and red leading
from the main groups of these colours down along the plane of
symmetry into the bottom of the access port. A reasonable frac-
tion of this port is covered by these two colours. This shows that
the internal convective flow patterns in this type of mixer are
quite complex (compared to the simple planar recirculation pat-
tern in drum mixer). The mixing degree for this case after three
revolutions is only 3.4% which is less than half of the laboratory
scale mixing rate.
From the mixing rates summarised in Table 2 it is clear that
the rate of mixing does change with increasing scale when the
speed of the mixer is scaled to maintain the same Froude num-
ber. Although it is often customary to scale rotating devices to
maintain the Froude number, there is absolutely no guarantee
that this is the appropriate dimensionless quantity to preserve
during scale up to give consistent rates of mixing. For this V-
blender, scaling up the volume by 31.6 times has led to a halving
of the mixing rate when measured in revolutions. The situation
is much worse if the mixing rate is measured in seconds since
the period of the rotation has also increased by a factor of 1.778
for the 58.8 l mixer. So the increase in the actual mixing period,
which is of critical interest for industrial application, leads to a
mixing rate that is actually 3.78 times slower at this scale than
it was for the laboratory scale.
4. Bladed mixers
The gravity driven mixers examined in the previous sec-
tion have at best a slow rate of mixing limited by the speed
of avalanching down the free surface and the rate at which par-
ticles are transported to the source location of these avalanches.
At worst these devices behave more like transport equipment
with a plug flow pattern, uniform residence time distribution
and poor mixing between different regions and different mate-
rials. To improve both the rate and extent of mixing, one of the
options is to use some form of mechanical agitation of the bed.
With bladed mixers, the speed of agitation is moderate. It is suf-
ficient to generate more complex flow patterns and to increase
the collisional intensities but gravity remains an important con-
tributor to the flow pattern. In most bladed mixers, the blade
dominates the flow behaviour near the blade while gravity con-
trols the motion of the bed over large areas of the mixer away
from the agitator. Here we examine the behaviour of two bladed
mixers.
4.1. Plough share mixer
The laboratory scale plough share mixer used here consists
of a horizontal cylindrical shell of diameter 250 mm and length
450 mm with flat end walls. One or more bent chevron shaped
plough blades (shown in Fig. 9) are mounted on a shaft of
diameter 30 mm located along the centerline of the shell. The
blade(s) extend outwards to have minimal clearance between
them and the inside of the mixing chamber. The plough blade(s)
and shaft rotate stirring a bed of particles. In this case the bed
consists of rice grains of approximately 2 mm × 5 mm. These
are approximated as spherical particles with sizes distributed
between 2.5 mm and 5 mm. The DEM plough share blade and
containment vessel were constructed to exactly match the spec-
ifications of the laboratory mixer used in the PEPT experiments
of Laurent, Bridgwater, and Parker (2000). The particle density
used was 1400 kg/m3 , the particle coefficient of restitution was
0.3 and the friction coefficient was 0.75. A spring stiffness of
4 × 106 N/m was used.
The granular flow induced by a single plough in a lab scale
plough share mixer has been investigated using both DEM
(Cleary et al., 2002) and PEPT (Laurent & Bridgwater, 2002;
Laurent et al., 2000). They both showed the development of two
loops of circulation one on either side of the plough. The parti-
cle displacements and therefore the mixing are controlled by the
number of blade passes. Preliminary comparison of the PEPT
and DEM results has shown reasonable agreement (Laurent &
Cleary, submitted for publication).
4.1.1. One blade mixer
Fig. 10a shows the initial set up of the mixer with the particles
coloured according to their initial position, so that we can see
the extent and nature of the mixing. In each radial cross section
the particles in the left half and right half have different colours.
These colours are also different on either side of the blade in the
axial direction. This simulation has around 103,000 particles.
The remaining frames of Fig. 10 show the system after 0.5, 1.0
 P.W. Cleary, M.D. Sinnott / Particuology 6 (2008) 419–444 431

Fig. 9. Sketches of the top view and side view of the plough (dimensions in mm) on the left and two views of the CAD model used in the DEM on the right.

and 1.5 revolutions for a blade speed of 4 Hz. After half a rev-
olution, the blade has risen above the initial surface level of the
particles and is lifting a large number of particles and throwing
them sideways leaving an empty trench behind it. Blue and green
particles are being pushed into the region initially occupied by
the red and yellow particles. After one revolution, the particles
lifted by the blade are travelling towards both ends of the mixer
in a coherent wave like structure. Meanwhile, particles to either
side of the blade path have flowed back down to largely fill the
trench left by the passage of the blade.
At 1.5 revolutions the blade has again cleared a trench behind
it and is throwing another group of particles. For this and sub-
sequent blade passages the mass of particles lifted is smaller
than the initial one since the surface level in the region through
which the blade passes never returns to the original height. In the
axial direction, particles pile up near the ends to form a surface

Fig. 10. Particle distribution in the plough share mixer with blade revolving at 4 Hz during the first 1.5 revolutions of blade motion.
432 P.W. Cleary, M.D. Sinnott / Particuology 6 (2008) 419–444
Fig. 11. Bed motion in the 1 blade plough share mixer for a rotation rate of 4 Hz
with particles coloured by their axial speed (with blue being high speed to the
left and red being high speed to the right and green being zero axial motion).
that slopes down to a low point/trench where the blade passes.
In the radial plane of the plough blade, the surface is lower
on the side where the blade enters and higher on the exit side
for obvious reasons. The passage of the plough blade generates
a three-dimensional recirculation pattern on either side of the
blade, with particles rising with the blade, being flung sideways
onto the surface and then flowing back down the slope towards
the middle of the mixer and the blade entry point. This circu-
latory flow causes the mixing. After only 1.5 revolutions there
are already clear signs of mixing of the colours. Of particular
importance is the presence of unmixed stagnant zones in the end
quarters of the mixer. This occurs because the perturbing effect
of the mixer blade is unable to extend this far into the particle
mass.
Fig. 11 shows the particles coloured by their axial speed (with
blue being to the left and red to the right) when the blade has
just reached vertical. The large mass of particles picked up by
the blade are now travelling ballistically in the air above the
bed. The particles on the left of the blade center are moving
strongly to the left and the ones on the right are moving to the
right. The particles closer to the blade are moving more slowly
in the axial direction whilst the particles near the surface of the
ballistic mass are travelling fastest. The avalanching return flow
where particles flow back into the trench behind the blade is also
clearly visible with particles on the left flowing to the right into
the trench and vice versa on the right. This shows the two key
elements of the flow in a bladed mixer with particle behaviour
dominated by the blade when near the blade but controlled by
gravity elsewhere.
Fig. 12 shows the structure of the complete flow pattern. The
instantaneous speed of all particles is averaged into a fixed Eule-
rian grid placed over the computational domain. This allows
the calculation of a steady average velocity field for this com-
plex cyclic flow. Isosurfaces of constant speed are then plotted.
They show regions for which the particles are travelling at or
above this cut-off speed and allow the coherent structure of
the flow to be visualized. Fig. 12a shows the regions of the
flow with a high speed of 1.25 m/s and above. There is a large
region towards each end of the mixer and a long slender neck
like structure rising from the bed at the back of the middle of
the mixer and extending up and forwards. This represents the
Fig. 12. 2 Isosurfaces of speed for (a) 1.25 m/s, and (b) 1.0 m/s showing the
structure of the flow pattern generated by the passage of one blade in the mixer.
These are coloured by axial velocity where red is 0.8 m/s directed to the left,
and blue is 0.8 m/s to the right.
region of very high speed arising from particles trapped on and
flying away from the plough blade as it rotates. As the blade
moves along this upper trajectory the volume of particles being
dragged along by the blade becomes smaller and so the high-
speed region becomes narrower. It eventually disappears when
there are no further particles moving with the blade just after
the blade reaches the forward horizontal position. Once the par-
ticles leave this high-speed region they are moving on rising
trajectories and so their vertical velocity declines due to gravity.
This means that their speed falls under the 1.25 m/s isosurface
cut off and a large void region is created surrounding the long
slender neck. The particles reach the tops of their parabolic tra-
jectories or impact the mixer shell and then begin to fall. After
a suitable period of fall they have accelerated to speeds again
exceeding 1.25 m/s. This produces the large symmetric cloud
structures at the ends of the mixer. There is a scattering of
structure just above the bed produced by particles hitting the
bed before slowing. These slowed particles then fall below the
isosurface cut-off and are then not visible. The isosurfaces are
coloured by their axial speed. This shows that all the material
on the left is moving to the left and all the material on the right
is moving to the right. The material in the slender neck region is
coloured close to green indicating that it has a low axial speed
but a very high circumferential speed. The 1.0 m/s contour in
Fig. 12b has a similar structure but the surfaces lie further from
the blade and the outside the high-speed surface. Contours for
progressively lower speeds form a sequence of growing nested
shells.
 P.W. Cleary, M.D. Sinnott / Particuology 6 (2008) 419–444 433

The rotation rate of the plough blade strongly affects the

nature of the flow in the mixer. At 4 Hz the blade is able to
throw a significant mass of particles. At the lower rotation rates
of 2.25 and 1 Hz the slower blade is much less able to throw
particles. At 4 Hz, the thrown particles reach both the top and
the ends of the mixer whilst at 2.25 Hz they just rise higher than
the shaft and barely reach the ends. Finally, for 1 Hz there is little
if any throw at all. After four revolutions at 4 Hz there is clearly
significant mixing already visible. At 2.25 Hz there is some mix-
ing but not quite as much. At 1 Hz there is clearly significantly
less mixing. The flow pattern is still a circulatory one, but it is
much more like a bulldozer pushing a wave of particles in front
of the blade until the slope is high enough for back flow to fill
the trench behind the blade. This is a gentle flow with mixing
being essentially by diffusion in the shearing regions rather than
convective mixing obtained when throwing masses of particles.
The percentage mixed (using the mixing measure) is shown
for the three rotation rates in Fig. 13. In all cases the mixing rate
is highest early and progressively declines as the bed becomes
progressively more mixed. The mixing rate is clearly rotation
rate dependent with 4 Hz providing the best mixing and 1 Hz
producing the worst. After 200 revolutions the % mixed is about
42%, 36% and 25%, respectively, for the 4 Hz, 2.25 Hz and 1 Hz
speeds. It is clear that the mixing states are trending to asymptotic
limits that are far from zero. This means that there is a limit to
how mixed this device can make the bed and this limit is strongly
rotation rate dependent. Based on the curves in Fig. 13 one might
expect the 4 Hz case to reach a 60–70% mixed state, whilst in
contrast one would expect the 1 Hz case be less than 30% mixed.
Fig. 14 shows the radial and axial centroid mixing measures
for the three rotation rates for very long times. Again, the radial
mixing is initially quite fast and tends to an asymptotic limit that
is rotation rate dependent. The extent of radial mixing increases
slowly over very long times. This is due to the axial mixing
limiting the extent of radial mixing. The slow transport of parti-
cles in the axial direction in the bed (towards the blade) enables
them to eventually reach the region where the blade can pick
up these particles and rapidly mix them in the radial direction.
So the slow axial flow also leads to slow increases in the radial
mixing measure. The radial mixing rates are again clearly blade
speed dependent, with 4 Hz producing about 80% mixed by 500
revolutions, whereas a 1 Hz rotation is struggling to reach 50%.
The axial mixing is shown in the right column of Fig. 14.
The early passages of the blade actually lead to permanent net
Fig. 13. Progress of the mixing for blade rotation rates of: (a) 4 Hz, (b) 2.25 Hz
migration of particles away from the blade path as the blade and (c) 1 Hz.
throws/pushes particles towards the ends (see Fig. 10). This con-
tinues until the slope produced is sufficient to generate a return
avalanching flow back towards the blade path that balances the 4.1.2. Four blade mixer
amount of material thrown towards the ends by the passage of Here we examine the flow in a more complex arrangement
the blade. This means that the axial centroids actually increase with four plough share blades arranged in a 90◦ offset spiral
their separation until this equilibrium is achieved and the magni- pattern. Fig. 15a shows the initial set up of the four blade mixer
tude is rotation rate dependent. These increases are around 20%, with the particles coloured according to the part of the bed that
10% and 5% for the three speeds respectively. There is strong they were originally located in with the colours changing on
symmetry in the axial mixing for the materials on either side of either side of each blade and on front and back halves of the
the blade. It is clear from Fig. 14 that the radial mixing is much mixer. This allows the extent and nature of the mixing to be
faster than the axial mixing and that the extent of axial mixing observed. This simulation contains around 250,000 particles for
is strongly dependent on the blade rotation rate. the 25% fill level. Fig. 15b shows the mixer after one revolution
434 P.W. Cleary, M.D. Sinnott / Particuology 6 (2008) 419–444

Fig. 14. The centroid locations of the four different colours/quadrants for rotation rates in the 1 blade plough share mixer for rotation rates: (a) 4 Hz, (b) 2.25 Hz and
(c) 1 Hz. (Left) the x-centroid component shows the radial mixing and (right) the axial mixing state.

at a 4 Hz blade speed. Each of the four blades is at a different
phase of the mixing cycle. The leading blade (on the right) has
just reached its highest point and is throwing a large stream of
particles to either side. The next blade (lagging by 90◦ ) is just
emerging from the bed. The third blade is pointing down and
is pushing part of the bed ahead of it, whilst the fourth blade
is approaching the bed and the airborne particles from its last
pass are now falling back towards the bed surface. Each blade
produces a similar flow pattern to the one found for the single
blade mixer.
After 1 s (four revolutions) as shown in Fig. 15c, there is
clearly significant radial mixing but only moderate axial mixing.
 P.W. Cleary, M.D. Sinnott / Particuology 6 (2008) 419–444
Fig. 15. Particle distribution in a four blade plough share mixer rotating at 4 Hz.
The axial mixing is faster than for the single blade case because
the blade spacing is reduced allowing blades to throw particles
directly over adjacent blade paths. Each blade leaves a trench
empty behind it that fills gradually by a surface avalanching flow.
Between these trenches are relatively stable stagnant zones that
cannot be mixed even by blades with such a close spacing. This
demonstrates the difficulties in obtaining complete mixing in
industrial mixers.
Fig. 16. Steady-state motion in the laboratory scale peg granulator, (left) view of the entire peg granulator contents and (right) an end view of a slice through the bed
at 500 mm (immediately before the conical outlet). Particles are colored by velocity magnitude (blue is slow and red is fast).
435
4.2. Peg mixer
A peg mixer is an example of a moderate-speed mixer that
uses an agitator to mix the bed of particles. This type of mixer is
commonly used to reduce residence times and thus equipment
dimensions. Here we study a laboratory-scale version. It has a
cylindrical shell that is 300 mm in diameter and 600 mm long.
Agitation was achieved using an axially mounted peg-agitator
consisting of 18 pins that are mounted on a 50 mm shaft and
arranged at equal intervals on a helical path. Each pin is 15 mm
in diameter and 125 mm in length with ends that move just
inside the surrounding shell. Simulations were performed with
the mixer rotating anti-clockwise at 60 rpm for a period of 30 s.
Feed material was introduced through a 60 mm inclined port at
the left end. The feed rate is chosen to match the discharge rate
at the other end and ensure that the bed mass remains constant
at 22.0 kg. The particles are spherical with density 2000 kg/m3
and have a size range of 2.5–8.8 mm. The particle coefficient of
restitution was 0.3 and the friction coefficient was 0.75. A spring
stiffness of 5000 N/m was used.
Fig. 16 shows the steady-state flow behavior inside the peg
granulator. The particle motion is driven by the pegs digging into
the bed. Apart from the obvious radial mixing induced by this
action, the pegs also generate a degree of axial movement. As a
peg enters the bed, it pushes material to either side, leading to the
formation of a mound in front of the peg. When the peg rotates
out of the bed this mound collapses creating flow in the axial
direction. The helical distribution of the pegs means that there is
a consistent bias in the motion generated towards the discharge
end. The particles near the pegs clearly move more rapidly than
those in quiescent regions between the lines of pegs. The peg
spacing is sufficiently close that the higher speed (green) regions
produced by successive pegs are connected. In the side view, it
can be seen that each line of pegs currently buried in the bed
creates a weak jet of material that escapes from the bed to the
left. In between these jets of particles moving to the left are slow
return flows of particles moving back to the opposite side of the
mixer. So the bed has a complex flow pattern induced by the
pegs with particles near the lines of pegs moving with the pegs
and a counter flow between the pegs of particles returning. This
creates three recirculation zones which migrate axially along the
436 P.W. Cleary, M.D. Sinnott / Particuology 6 (2008) 419–444

mixer length towards the feed end. The cross-section view also
shows that the particle speeds are much higher near the surface
than they are deep inside the bed. So the pegs have strong local
effects on the particles, but when the pegs are not nearby the
particle motion slows considerably to near rest.
Fig. 17 shows a view along the axis of the mixer, but with the
particles in the discharge half of the mixer not shown. The parti-
cles are coloured by their size (with blue being fine particles and
red being coarse). This shows that there is very strong size seg-
regation being generated inside the bed by the motion induced
by the passage of the pegs. There is a clear concentration of fine
material on the right where the pegs first enter the bed and there
are only coarse particles on the left side where the pegs leave the
bed. The fine particles are more easily able to avoid the pegs and
percolate between the large particles which are much less able
to avoid being pushed forward by the pegs. Such strong segre-
gation effects are very undesirable in a device whose design aim
is to mix particles. This is potentially a problem with any device Fig. 17. Particles coloured by size (with blue being fine particles and red being
coarse) viewed along the axis of the mixer showing significant size segregation
using an agitator since the high shear induced near the blades
within the bed.
can lead to size and also density segregation.
Fig. 18 shows the progress of feed material (red) through recirculation zones set up by the peg movement. Direct interac-
the original bed of particles (blue). The feed material falls onto tion with the pegs gives the particles high velocities leading to
the rotating shaft and is distributed over the bed near the feed strong local mixing, particularly close to the free surface where
opening. Particles are moved around by the axially migrating the impacts with the pegs can move individual particles a signif-

Fig. 18. Motion of feed particles (colored red/dark grey) into an existing bed of particles (light blue/light grey) in a laboratory scale peg mixer.
 P.W. Cleary, M.D. Sinnott / Particuology 6 (2008) 419–444
Fig. 19. (a) Residence time distribution of feed particles over 15 revolutions of the peg mixer and, (b) collision energy spectra for all collisions over the same period.
icant distance. In the second frame, the feed material dominates
the first quarter of the mixer with some feed particles having
already passed the middle of the mixer. In the third frame, the
feed material is around two thirds of the way along the mixer but
the leading feed material is already discharging. There are also
original blue particles visible that are confined close to the feed
end of the mixer. The flow behaviour is clearly quite different
to the plug flow observed in the drum mixer and the interface
between the blue and red particles is much less sharp.
The residence time distribution of feed material is shown
in Fig. 19a. The mean residence time is significantly less than
for a plug flow in a drum mixer and the distribution is broad
with a number of distinct modes. The breadth of the distribution
occurs because the pegs push particles towards both the feed and
discharge ends. Therefore many particles move much faster than
the plug flow speed, whilst others move much more slowly (after
being pushed backwards repeatedly). Such a broad residence
time distribution will not be desirable for granulation, where it
will contribute to broader aggregate size distributions. However
it will be positive for mixing of non-cohesive or weakly cohesive
particles.
The collision energy spectra for the peg-mixer are shown
in Fig. 19b. In addition to the spectra for all particle colli-
sions, the contributions of collisions with the pegs and walls
are also shown. The higher energy collisions (i.e. 10−4 –10−3 J)
are dominated by interactions between particles and the pegs.
The impacts with the pegs are quite strong and are likely
to cause aggregate breakage when this device is used for
agglomeration. This will have a strong influence on its final
product size. In contrast to the drum mixer,where the impacts
are 5–6 times weaker, there is much more energy available
for control of aggregate size. In terms of mixing, this device
appears to have reasonable mixing characteristics despite the
tendency to segregate fine material towards one side of the
bed.
5. High shear mixers
High shear mixers are batch mixers that employ an impeller
rotating at high speed to strongly agitate the granular material.
Such mixers can be used for dry or wet materials (Darelius,
437
Lennartsson, Rasmuson, Bjorn, & Folestad, 2007) and are
commonly used for granulation, pelletisation, emulsification,
agitation and dispersion. In these mixers, gravity plays a less
important role than in the lower speed bladed mixers. DEM
models of flow in laboratory scale high shear mixers fitted with
a blade impeller have been developed by Stewart, Bridgewater,
and Parker (2001), and Stewart, Bridgewater, Zhou, et al. (2001)
and validated against PEPT data for spherical particle assem-
blies. The flow patterns, shape of the bed and velocity fields
within the packed bed have been well described. Other lab
scale high shear mixers have been studied by Zhou, Yu, and
Bridgewater (2003), Kuo et al. (2004) and Bertrand et al. (2005).
To date there are no DEM models for more complex, production
scale high shear mixers due to issues of scale and the complexity
of geometry and operation of such devices. Some experimental
studies of more novel devices do exist (Ng, Kwan, Ding, Ghadiri,
& Fan, 2007; Ng et al., 2008).
Here we study a laboratory scale high shear mixer. It con-
sists of a vertical cylindrical shell fitted with a disc impeller
or with a rectangular blade impeller. These impellers rotate
around the center of the mixer at high speed. This has previously
been used in Sinnott and Cleary (2003). The key dimensions
of these mixers are given in Fig. 20. The ends and the bot-
tom of blade impeller are almost in contact with the floor and
walls of the mixer so there is a negligible clearance. The sim-
ulations used a spring constant of 1000 N/m. Particle–particle
and particle–boundary collisions were both modelled using a
coefficient of restitution of 0.9 since the material being mixed
is quite elastic. The particle density was 2500 kg/m3 . Stewart,
Bridgewater, and Parker (2001) and Stewart, Bridgewater, Zhou,
et al. (2001) found the structure of particle flows in this type of
mixer was relatively insensitive to specific coefficients of fric-
tion in the range 0.3–0.5. So a coefficient of friction of 0.4 was
chosen for both particle–particle and particle–boundary inter-
actions. Particles were represented as spheres with diameters
ranging from 1.45 to 1.55 mm. A friction coefficient of 0.4 was
used for all particle collisions. Based on the cylindrical sym-
metry of the mixer, particles were classified into distinct spatial
regions (quadrants, annuli, and horizontal strata) and coloured
in order to separately study the different mixing regimes: radial,
azimuthal and vertical mixing respectively.
438 P.W. Cleary, M.D. Sinnott / Particuology 6 (2008) 419–444
Fig. 20. High shear mixer geometries fitted with the blade and disc impellers.
5.1. Disc impeller
Azimuthal mixing patterns for the disc impeller show simple
flow behaviour. A single quadrant is displayed in Fig. 21 for
various times during the mixing process. The other quadrants
are present but not shown. Particles are coloured by their height
in the bed with blue particles in the lowest layer adjacent to the
disc and red particles in the surface of the heap formed near the
wall due to centrifugal forces. The motion of the particle bed
is driven by the drag force from the rotation of the disc below.
Particles near the wall experience a retarding drag force due to
particle–wall friction. The central core of the bed rotates as a
near rigid body and the outer bands wrap around this central
region in a spiralling pattern as shown in Fig. 21b.
Fig. 21c shows that, even after three revolutions, the spiralling
band structure remains coherent and clearly visible, and there
appears to be no significant radial migration across the spiral
band structure. The radial mixing pattern is shown in Fig. 21d
for the full bed. Here particles have been divided into annular
regions and coloured respectively. After 13.4 revolutions, there
has been almost no exchange of particles between these groups
indicating that no radial mixing results from the effect of the disc
impeller on the bed. This occurs because, for the disc impeller,
the only direction that the bed can experience shear is in the
direction of rotation. This leads to cumulative strain of the bed
by the wall and by the floor, thus preventing the powder from
rotating fully as a rigid body.
The average angular velocity of the particles in the disc
impeller, as a function of radial position, is plotted in Fig. 22. The
dashed line represents the powder mechanics analytical solution
of Knight, Seville, Wellm, and Instone (2001) for this system.
They assumed rigid body motion for the powder, deriving an
expression for constant angular velocity.

7g
ωD = (4)
9R
The fluctuations seen near the centre of the bed are due to data
sparsity. This shows that the inner sections of the bed rotate as a
rigid body with an angular velocity of ωD out to approximately
half the mixer radius. Near the wall, frictional forces from the
container wall dominate and the angular velocity of particles is
reduced substantially. This leads to cumulative shear strain in
the circumferential direction creating the vortex patterns. This
is the sole mechanism for mixing with this impeller.
5.2. Blade impeller
Flow behaviour for the mixer using the blade impeller is more
complex. Fig. 23 shows the interaction between the blade and
particle bed where only particles in a single quadrant are visible
and coloured by their height in the bed. In Fig. 23a, particles
are pushed up into a heap in front of the approaching blade. The
blade sweeps through the bed initially setting up three distinct
vertical layers (at least for the outer radial region of the bed).
Particles flowing over the blade are deposited into the empty
space left behind by the impeller and fall towards the floor of
the mixer as shown in Fig. 23b. Particles in the next quadrant
begin to flow over the blade and accumulate on top of the bottom
layer of particles from the first quadrant. This stratifies particles
in neighbouring quadrants into horizontal layers that are offset
in the azimuthal direction as a result of the shearing by the blade.
Fig. 23c shows the surface bed layer and the layer near the
floor for the single quadrant after 1.5 revolutions, at which time
the selected particles are distributed around the entire circumfer-
 P.W. Cleary, M.D. Sinnott / Particuology 6 (2008) 419–444 439

Fig. 21. (a)–(c) Mixing of a single quadrant by the disc impeller with particles coloured by height and (d) top view of four annular regions showing the lack of radial
mixing in the bed after 8 s.

ence of the mixer. Particles at the bottom of the mixer are pushed 5.3. Comparison of mixing for disc and blade impellers
in front of the blade around to the next blade further enhancing
the displacement of the vertical layers. Near the surface of the Mixing measurements have been made for each impeller type
fast moving heap that precedes the blade, particles continue to in order to assess the relative mixing performance. The evolution
avalanche down the front of this incline and are trapped for long
periods within this recirculating heap.
To better observe the presence of these layers, Fig. 23d shows
all four quadrants visible at the same instant of time as that in
Fig. 23b. These four quadrants are coloured yellow, red, white
and blue respectively as a visual aid to the mixing. The layer
of red particles visible beneath the bulk of the white quadrant
is the result of a previous blade pass. This bottom layer is still
relatively unmixed with the white particles. Subsequent blade
crossings will begin to mix across this boundary as particles flow
over the blade. At the same time, red particles have been spread
across the white quadrant in a thin layer. Behind the blade there
is a radial surface flow down the heap toward the centre of the
mixer. The motion of the blade causes surface particles in front
of the heap to be thrown radially outward diffusing the already
thin surface layer near the walls. Mixing continues rapidly in Fig. 22. Predicted average angular velocity versus normalised radial position
these top and bottom layers. for particles for the high shear mixer with a disc impeller.
440 P.W. Cleary, M.D. Sinnott / Particuology 6 (2008) 419–444

Fig. 23. Progress of mixing of a single quadrant by the blade impeller: (a)–(c) particles are coloured by height to show the motion in the top and bottom layers and
(d) mixing of the four particle quadrants after 0.6 revolutions.

of the mixing state with time is shown in Figs. 24 and 25, for
the disc and blade impellers respectively. Fig. 24a shows strong
azimuthal mixing for the disc impeller with most of the mixing
completed within five revolutions. The curve shows an expo-
nentially decreasing mixing rate with time leading to a mixing
measure of 65% after 13 revolutions. The rate of decline sug-
gests that the asymptotic limit for azimuthal mixing will be only
slightly larger than this. The mixing is far from complete due
to the inability of the rigid rotating core to mix. From Fig. 22,
the radial size of the central core is half the mixer radius which

Fig. 24. The mixing state for a high shear mixer with a disc impeller as a function of time for: (a) azimuthal and (b) radial mixing.
 P.W. Cleary, M.D. Sinnott / Particuology 6 (2008) 419–444
Fig. 25. The mixing state for a high shear mixer with a blade impeller as a function of time for: (a) azimuthal and (b) radial mixing.
equates to 25% of the bed volume that will not mix. Fig. 24b
shows very clearly that there is no radial mixing at all for the
disc impeller. As mentioned previously, due to the geometry
of the disc impeller and its cylindrical symmetry there is no
mechanism for inducing radial transport. The combination of
both mixing measures shows that this impeller is incapable of
producing complete mixing of the particulates.
The rate of azimuthal mixing is very rapid for the blade case,
leading to almost complete mixing in only 13 revolutions. Unlike
the disc impeller, mixing with the blade shows no evidence of
large coherent non-mixing regions and the final mixing state
asymptotes towards a near homogeneous mixture. The azimuthal
mixing is faster due to the complex flow pattern over the blade.
This results from a combination of rapid circumferential flow
over the blade and the three-dimensional recirculation within
the heap of material which is pushed in front of the blade. The
shape of the curves in Figs. 24 and 25a arises because material
in the outer radial band mixes more rapidly in the azimuthal
direction and the change in mixing state is almost linear up until
the time when a single quadrant is able to wrap all the way
around the mixer and start interacting with itself. The inner core
mixes more slowly, and in the case of the disc impeller not at
all. As the outer radial band becomes well mixed, the possibility
of further mixing of this region is then reduced and the mixing
state tends towards an asymptotic limit.
The motion of the blade impeller causes strong radial mix-
ing (see Fig. 25b). Initially, this is slower than the azimuthal
mixing but the rate is almost constant and so the radial mixing
state catches up with the azimuthal mixing after about 14 revo-
lutions. Particle migration occurs along the length of the blade
into and out from the center of the mixer. Radial migration is
localized to a narrow band surrounding the blade due to the
Table 3
Extent of azimuthal and radial mixing for the disc and blade impellers after 13
revolutions.
Disc Blade
Azimuthal Radial Azimuthal
Amount of mixed 65% 7% 87%
441
blade shearing the bed. As the blade rotates through one period
it continually encounters new material. Thus most particles in
the bed have a similar chance of experiencing radial migration
when they encounter the blade regardless of radial position. This
produces the observed linear increase in radial mixing with time
and after 14 revolutions. The simulation was not run for enough
revolutions to predict the final asymptotic state for the blade
impeller, but based on the degree of mixing shown in Fig. 25
there is a strong probability that this mixer will mix the parti-
cles completely. This is a highly desirable attribute of a mixer
and one not possessed by a number of the mixers studied in this
paper.
The lack of radial transport of particles when using the disc
impeller marks the greatest difference in the mechanism driv-
ing the mixing for the two configurations. Azimuthal mixing is
slower for the disc impeller than the case using the blade, and
leads to an incompletely mixed final state due to the existence of
a rigidly rotating core. Complex flow patterns in the azimuthal
direction for the blade impeller arise from particles constrained
to move with the blade, and lead to more thorough mixing.
Superimposed on the mixing measures for the blade impeller
high shear mixer (see Fig. 25a) are small regular oscillations
Radial
75% Fig. 26. Azimuthal mixing rates in a high shear mixer using the blade and disc
impellers.
442 P.W. Cleary, M.D. Sinnott / Particuology 6 (2008) 419–444

Fig. 27. Progress of mixing of four equal volume annular regions in a high shear mixer using a blade agitator for: (a) spherical particles and (b) super-quadric
particles.

due to the passage of the blade. The frequency is 2.5 Hz, which
is between 1 and 2 times the blade rotation rate. This suggests
that the bulk circulation rate of the particles is less than the
blade rotation rate due to the retarding effects of the walls. The
mixture quality for the azimuthal and radial mixing regimes after
13 revolutions for each impeller case is given in Table 3. The
blade impeller is clearly a much more efficient mixing impeller,
both in azimuthal and radial mixing.
The variation of the azimuthal mixing rate throughout the
mixing process is shown in Fig. 26 for each impeller. The mix-
ing rates are calculated by differentiating the mixing state. Both
curves are similar in shape but the blade impeller has a consis-
tently higher mixing rate. There is an initial linear increase in
mixing rate up until around three revolutions when the peak-
mixing rate is achieved. This is the amount of time required
for significant material in each quadrant to travel the full dis-
tance around the circumference of the mixer shell and begin
mixing with itself again. The mixing rates then begin to drop.
By four revolutions the rates have begun to decrease logarithmi-
cally. As time progresses and the amount of material remaining
to mix declines the mixing rate declines proportionally trending
asymptotically towards zero.
 P.W. Cleary, M.D. Sinnott / Particuology 6 (2008) 419–444
Table 4
Extent of mixing for spherical and superquadric cases and for each mixing
regime after 10 blade revolutions.
Particle shape Azimuthal Radial Vertical
Spherical 87% 69% 73%
Super-quadric 83% 55% 76%
5.4. Effect of particle shape on mixing for a blade impeller
To evaluate the effect that particle shape has on the flow
and mixing in a bladed high shear mixer we compare closely
matched simulations with spherical and super-quadric particles.
The super-quadric particles were chosen with a maximum char-
acteristic length of 1.45–1.55 mm so that they had the same
particle volume and number of particles as used for the spherical
particle case. The intermediate and minor axis aspect ratios were
randomly chosen to be in the range 0.7–1.0. The blockiness was
chosen to be in the range 2.5–6.0 giving particle shapes vary-
ing from fairly rounded to moderately angular. These shapes are
reasonable representations for grains and many household prod-
uct components. The coordination numbers were 13.6 and 9.2
for the super-quadric and spherical particles respectively. The
50% increase in the connectivity of the particles when they have
plausible shape attributes is one of the contributors to the much
greater strength of these materials and their much greater abil-
ity to resist shear. This is demonstrated by the increase in the
power consumption of the high shear mixer which increases
from 0.45 W for spherical particles up to 0.61 W for super-
quadric particles. This almost 50% increase in power arises
because the impeller needs to do much more work to overcome
the increased bed resistance created by the interlocking of the
angular and elongated super-quadric particles.
The mixing of annular regions in Fig. 27 shows a marked
difference in the radial transport of SQ and spherical particles.
The SQ annuli remain fairly coherent with limited diffusion
between annular regions after a single blade pass, whereas the
spherical particles show significant stretching of the central
annular regions along the length of the blade and a contrac-
tion in the direction normal to the blade. Surface particles in
the inner annuli rapidly diffuse outward, completely covering
the outer radial regions. This change in flow behaviour results
from the much higher flowability of the spheres relative to the
stronger microstructure of the super-quadrics. On this basis, the
timescales for radial mixing might reasonably be expected to be
faster for spheres than for SQs.
Mixing measurements have again been made for each mixing
regime: azimuthal, radial and vertical. The shape of the mixing
curves is not greatly different for the spherical and super-quadric
cases for each mixing regime. Thus we will only describe the
final mixing states for each regime after 10 blade revolutions.
The percentage of material mixed after 10 blade revolutions
is given for each case in Table 4. For the spheres case, mix-
ing occurs most rapidly in the azimuthal direction and is 87%
mixed at this time. The radial and vertical mixing regimes are
markedly slower than the azimuthal direction with both showing
about 70% mixing at the same end time. The super-quadric case
443
shows strong azimuthal and vertical mixing, but only moderate
radial mixing within 10 blade revolutions. Super-quadric parti-
cles show a strong 14% reduction in radial mixing relative to the
spherical case. The azimuthal mixing is just 4% lower, and the
vertical mixing state is actually 3% greater than for the spheri-
cal particles. The reduced radial mixing is a consequence of the
strengthened microstructure of the blocky, elongated particles
and the resultant increase in resistance to shear. Flow parallel
to the blade therefore proceeds very slowly (Fig. 27b). Particle
shape appears to quantitatively affect particle mixing and impor-
tantly its effect is different for different directions of mixing. The
inclusion of particle shape augments vertical mixing, moderately
slows azimuthal mixing and sharply reduces radial mixing.
6. Conclusions
Mixing of particulates is a critical industrial process which
has been traditionally hard to improve by empirical methods
because of the difficulty in making measurements of particulates
in enclosed process equipment. DEM is increasingly viable as
an alternative method for investigating and optimizing mixing
and granulation equipment design and operation. Simulation
is effective at predicting information on the performance of
different mixers which is difficult and expensive to obtain using
direct experiment. In this paper we have used DEM to better
understand flow dynamics and assess mixing in several different
types of devices. We have classified mixers broadly as gravity
controlled, bladed and high shear depending on the relative con-
tribution of gravity and internal agitation. These classifications
depend on the generation of the flow patterns that promote mix-
ing. In the area of gravity controlled mixing we have been able
to analyse the performance of continuously fed drum and pan
mixers and batch V-blenders. For the bladed mixers, where both
agitation and gravity play a critical role, we have analysed the
flow performance for a batch plough share mixer and a contin-
uously fed peg mixer. For high intensity agitation where gravity
is a minor contributor to the flow behaviour we have explored
the effect of the agitator type for batch high shear mixers.
Two methods have been used to quantify mixing in all the
mixer examples explored in this paper. One is based on the
change in location of centroids of groups of particle chosen to
measure mixing in specific directions. The other is an effective
method for determining the overall degree of homogeneity of
the mixtures. Both methods have allowed us to quantitatively
explore the degree, speed and quality of mixing across a broad
range of mixing devices.
Using the single blade high shear mixer as the example we
have explored the effect of particle shape on mixing perfor-
mance and found that it has an extremely strong impact. The
shape of the particles, in terms of their angularity and elongation,
affects the degree of connectivity of particles to their neighbours
and the degree to which they can lock together. This increases
the strength of the material and its ability to resist shear. This
changes the internal balance of forces and the places where the
particle microstructure fails and flows. All these impact on the
nature of the mixing performance. For the high shear mixer,
moderate non-sphericity leads to a sharp reduction in the radial
444 P.W. Cleary, M.D. Sinnott / Particuology 6 (2008) 419–444
transport of particles and a matching strong reduction in mixing
efficiency in that direction. Mixing in vertical and circumferen-
tial directions was only mildly affected. Shape can be expected
to have similarly strong effects in other mixers, but the specific
nature of the changes depends sensitively on the nature of the
particulate flow pattern.
With DEM modelling now possible for millions of particles
more complex process issues such as how to scale up mixer
designs from laboratory to operating scales can now be investi-
gated. Here we used models at five scales to help understand the
speed scaling of a V-blender with the largest model having 4.85
million particles for a 186 l mixing vessel. The often used Froude
number scaling method is not found to be suitable for predicting
mixing rates at the larger scale. A reduction of 50% in mixing
rate per revolution was found in scaling up from laboratory scale
to the 58.8 l mixer. This represents an almost fourfold increase in
the mixing period to reach a specific target level of homogeneity.
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of
Dave Morton to the modelling of the drum, peg and pan mixers.
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