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Computational prediction of performance for a full scale Isamill: Part 1 –

Media motion and energy utilisation in a dry mill

Article in Minerals Engineering · April 2015

DOI: 10.1016/j.mineng.2015.04.005

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 Minerals Engineering 79 (2015) 220–238

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

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

Computational prediction of performance for a full scale Isamill:

Part 1 – Media motion and energy utilisation in a dry mill
Paul W. Cleary ⇑, Matt D. Sinnott, Gerald G. Pereira
CSIRO Digital Productivity Flagship, Locked Bag 10, Clayton South, Vic 3169, Australia

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

Article history: The Isamill is a horizontal stirred media mill used for fine and ultrafine grinding. Discrete Element
Received 2 January 2015 Method (DEM) simulation has been used in this paper to study the behaviour of the media and the
Revised 18 March 2015 collisional environment in a full industrial scale Isamill. The DEM modelling has been able to provide a
Accepted 8 April 2015
general understanding of the force balances that control the mill performance and the quantitative
Available online 25 April 2015
variation of key performance measures such as power draw and peak collision energy with changes in
mill operating parameters and media properties. The key factor controlling the behaviour of the media
Keywords:
and mill performance is the force balance on the media adjacent to the rotating discs of the impellor.
DEM
Isamill
Gravity and any applied axial pressure gradient play a critical role by providing a restoring force that
Comminution presses the media bed against the discs which enables energy transfer from the discs to the adjacent
Charge motion media. Three important aspects of the media flow are identified with the holes in the discs playing a
Energy utilisation critical role in media transport and generating high speeds media jets in the upper half of the mill.
Crown Copyright Ó 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Comminution of solid particles is a critical element of many
processing operations. It involves reducing the size of particles
by inducing fracture of the particles, typically during some form
of impact or high stress contact with either other particles or with
solid surfaces. When the coarser particles to be broken are larger,
(of order 0.03–1.0 m), then the devices are usually called crushers.
When they are smaller the process is normally termed grinding
and the devices are described as mills. Usually the size of the feed
material, the scale of the physical surfaces (that it interacts with to
induce breakage) and the collision intensity controls the fineness
of the product size distribution. The breakage is typically limited
by the amount of energy that can be imparted to particles and this
depends heavily on the nature of the mill.
The coarsest grinding is usually performed in Autogenous
Grinding (AG), Semi-Autogenous Grinding (SAG) or Run-of-mine
(ROM) ball mills which are large tumbling mills (with feed material
that can be up to 200–300 mm). The maximum collision energy is
given by the maximum fall height of a particle which is controlled
by the physical size of the machine and gravity. Finer grinding can
be produced using agitated mills where some form of mechanical
agitator is introduced. This is usually a structure that rotates
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 3 9545 8005.
E-mail address: Paul.Cleary@csiro.au (P.W. Cleary).
around the central axis of the mill. Examples are tower mills (e.g.
Vertimills) using screws and attritors or pin mills using rods, studs
or bars. The breakage energies are controlled by the centrifugal
force which is determined by the rotation rate of the agitator.
Circulation of the charge is typically still controlled by gravity
but the breakage energies are larger than can be generated in tum-
bling mills. For higher energy inputs, stirred mills are used. These
again use mechanical stirrers, but at much higher speeds which
enables the generation of the much higher collision energies.
Axial circulation is usually not controlled by gravity which
removes the rotation rate restrictions that limit the agitated mills.
Examples of stirred mill include the Isamill, centrifugal mill,
Netzche mills, the HICOM mill and the Derrick mill. In many of
the mills, grinding media is introduced in order to increase and
control the collision frequencies and the energies of the collisions.
Typically using finer grinding media leads to finer ground product.
There are many questions about the design and operation of
stirred mills including where the breakage occurs, how it is gener-
ated, and media and product transport within the mill. One partic-
ular issue for fine grinding in stirred mills (such as the Isamill) is
the question regarding media selection. Experimental studies of
the Isamill have therefore focussed on the energy efficiency in
milling applications with different media (Gao et al., 2001;
Farber et al., 2009). Gao et al. (2001) considered copper reverbera-
tory furnace slag and heavy medium plant rejects as their two
media and found the lower density medium (heavy medium plant

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mineng.2015.04.005
0892-6875/Crown Copyright Ó 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 P.W. Cleary et al. / Minerals Engineering 79 (2015) 220–238
reject) was more energy efficient but produced less milling of final
product. Farber et al. (2009), on the other hand, looked at the ben-
efits of ceramic media to ascertain the mill performance based on
media size, density and friction. In contrast to Gao et al., Farber
et al. found the higher density media was more energy efficient
and that friction was more important than particle bead density
on the mill power draw.
In general the energy efficiency of grinding improves as one
moves from tumbling to agitated to stirred mills. Specifically, Shi
et al. (2009) have shown that an Isamill (as a horizontally stirred
mill) at least at laboratory scale exhibited better grinding efficiency
for fine grinding (product less than 40 lm) compared to other (ver-
tical) mills (such as ball and tower mills). In contrast, for coarse
grinding they showed that the ball mill was more efficient than
the Isamill with fine feed. Morrison et al. (2009) showed using
DEM modelling why a tower mill is more efficient than a ball mill.
It has been shown for stirred mills (such as the Isamill) that it can
produce increasingly small fines (down to micron size) with
increased efficiency (Johnson et al., 1998; Curry and Clermont,
2005). Other experimental studies have been carried out to better
understand the grinding mechanisms such as the work by
Theuerkauf and Schwedes (1999) and Kwade et al. (1996). The lat-
ter looked at the effect of circumferential velocity of grinding discs
and size of grinding beads on energy consumption for a given pro-
duct fineness and then assessed a range of stress mechanisms in
stirred mills based on stress intensity and showed that product
breakage in stirred mills is most likely due to collisions between
high and low velocity media near stirrer discs. van der
Westhuizen et al. (2011) performed an experimental study of an
M4 laboratory scale Isamill using PEPT.
Modelling, using the Discrete Element Method (DEM), has
become a powerful tool for understanding and analysing mills over
the last decade. Mishra and Rajamani (1992, 1994) were the first to
do this with two dimensional models of just media within ball
mills. Cleary (1998, 2001a,b) then included coarse feed into more
detailed two dimensional ball mill models. Cleary and Sawley
(2002) used a slice model in three dimensions to explore the same
type of coarse feed ball mill. Djordjevic (2003, 2005) used similar
models to estimate the effect of charge size distribution and liner
variations on power draw. The first use of DEM for SAG mills was
by Rajamani and Mishra (1996). This was followed by Cleary
(2001a,c), Herbst and Nordell (2001) and Morrison and Cleary
(2004, 2008). Cleary et al. (2008) and Cleary (2009a) have pre-
sented large three dimensional DEM models of SAG and ball mills.
Many authors (such as in the special issue edited by Cleary and
Morrison, 2008) have since used DEM for simulating tumbling
mills.
DEM modelling of stirred mills, such as the tower mill and pin
mill with DEM has also been performed by Sinnott et al. (2006)
and Cleary et al. (2006). DEM has also been used to model high
intensity stirred mills, such as the centrifugal mill by Inoue and
Okaya (1996), Cleary and Hoyer (2000), Cho et al. (2006), Lee
et al. (2010) and Cleary et al. (2010) and Owen and Cleary
(2014). A recent review by Weerasekara et al. (2013) indicates that
current status of DEM modelling of comminution processes for all
the different types of mills.
The specific high intensity mill being considered in this paper is
an Isamill. This consists of a horizontal grinding chamber with
central agitator containing a series of parallel grinding discs.
Yang et al. (2006) first studied the flow of grinding media in a
simplified 1.4 l laboratory scale Isamill with multiple discs using
DEM. Jayasundara et al. (2006, 2008, 2010, 2011a,b, 2012) then
used this model to study the effect of media properties and
geometry on grinding performance and disc wear. Cleary et al.
(2008) examined the flow and segregation of rock particles within
the charge in a periodic slice model of a larger 80 l laboratory
221
Isamill. Yang et al. (2008) tracked particle trajectories, particle dis-
tributions throughout the mill, collision energies and frequencies
as a function of velocities and compared simulation results to
lab-scale experiments.
In this paper, we use DEM modelling to understand media
motion within the operation of a full scale industrial Isamill.
These mills are used dry for processes such as grinding of cement,
an example of which is the Netzche Ankamill (Altun et al., 2013,
2014). The media behaviour is also indicative of the performance
of the wet Isamills. The volume of the grinding chamber of the
M10000 mill used here is 10,000 l. This is currently the second lar-
gest available such mill with the largest being the M50000 which
holds 50,000 l and has a maximum power of 8 MW. The nature
of the force balances that control the operation of these mills will
be elucidated. The effect of changes in key operating and charge
parameters such as mill speed, media fill level, axial pressure gra-
dient, media size and friction will also be explored. This paper is in
two parts. This first part considers just DEM modelling of the
media whose outcomes are relevant to both dry and wet operation.
The representation of the slurry in the wet mills and its effect will
be explored in the second part.
2. DEM method
The DEM code used in this study has been used extensively for
modelling of grinding mills, see Cleary (1998, 2001a,b,c, 2004,
2009a,b), Morrison and Cleary (2004, 2008) for details and exam-
ples of such comminution simulation. In this method, the motion
and collisions of all particles are predicted. The particles are
allowed to overlap and the amount of overlap Dx, and normal vn
and tangential vt relative velocities determine the collisional forces
via a contact force law. A linear spring-dashpot model is used for
the contact force where the normal force is:
F n ¼ kn Dx þ C n v n : ð1Þ
This consists of a linear spring to provide the repulsive force and
a dashpot to dissipate a proportion of the relative kinetic energy.
The maximum overlap between particles is determined by the
stiffness kn of the spring in the normal direction. The normal
damping coefficient Cn is chosen to give the required coefficient
of restitution e (defined as the ratio of the post-collisional to pre-
collisional normal component of the relative velocity).
The force in the tangential direction is given by:
n X o
F t ¼ min lF n ; k t v t Dt þ C t v t ð2Þ
where the vector force Ft and velocity vt are defined in the plane
tangent to the surface at the contact point. The summation term
represents an incremental spring that stores energy from the rela-
tive tangential motion and models the elastic tangential deforma-
tion of the contacting surfaces, whilst the dashpot dissipates
energy from the tangential motion and models the tangential plas-
tic deformation of the contact. The total tangential force Ft is limited
by the Coulomb frictional limit lFn, at which point the surface con-
tact shears and the particles begin to slide over each other. For more
details on the contact model and the relative performance differ-
ences of different contact models for inelastic collisions, see
Thornton et al. (2013).
3. M10000 – a 10,000 l industrial scale Isamill
In this paper we explore the performance and operation of a full
industrial scale Isamill, namely the M10000. It is so named due to
the volume of the mill shell being 10,000 l. Fig. 1 shows the Isamill
configuration from a number of views. Fig. 1a shows the inside of
the whole mill with the exterior grinding chamber being
222 P.W. Cleary et al. / Minerals Engineering 79 (2015) 220–238
Fig. 1. Isamill geometry used in the DEM simulations, (a) impellor and classifier in place inside the mill shell, (b) close up of one grinding disc, and (c) classifier.
transparent. The central impeller consists of eight grinding discs
distributed along a central shaft. Towards the discharge end of
the mill (left side of Fig. 1a) there is a rotary classifier for retaining
the grinding media inside the grinding chamber. Fig. 1b shows a
close up of one of the grinding discs. Each disc contains a series
of regularly spaced (kidney shaped) holes through which the slurry
and product can pass. Fig. 1c shows the rotary classifier. This con-
sists of an axial base plate in which there are eight rounded trian-
gular holes (whose purpose is to permit axial flow of slurry into the
classifier). Attached to the base are a series of axial bars that con-
nect to a ring to form a cage. This occupies much of the volume of
the end region of the mill between the last grinding disc and the
end of the mill chamber. The role of the classifier is to prevent
the flow of the centrifuging grinding media into the discharge sec-
tion of the mill. It contains a series of rectangular slots through
which the slurry can carry the finer product out of the mill. The
classifier is often operated with a finer mesh screen across the
slots. For DEM simulations of the grinding media we use solid walls
where the screens are located because the screen holes are too
small for media to pass through and so there is no benefit in resolv-
ing these very small features. This still allows media to potentially
build up against the screen and fill the slots without travelling
through into the discharge section.
The detailed measurements of key geometric attributes of the
mill are given in Table 1. The cylindrical grinding chamber has
internal radius 0.87 m and length 4.3 m. The grinding disc diame-
ter is 1.4 m and they are 130 mm thick. The radial gap between the
outside of the grinding discs and the inside of the shell is 170 mm.
The installed power on such a mill would usually be 3 MW. Key
volumes for the configurations are:
 Interior volume of the shell is 10.2 m3.
 The volume of the impellor is 2.5 m3.
Table 1
Key geometric attributes and installed power for a 10,000 l Isamill.
Shell length (interior) 4.3 m long
Shell diameter (interior) 1.74 m
Shaft diameter 525 mm
Grinding discs 8
Disc diameter 1400 mm
Disc thickness 130 mm
Distance b/w disc surfaces 310 mm
Radial gap b/w outside of disc and interior of shell 170 mm
Installed power 3 MW
 The volume enclosed by the classifier is 0.75 m3.
 The net volume available for grinding is 6.95 m3.
In this modelling, only the media particles are included as the
feed and product particles are typically less than 100 lm and res-
olution of these particles is too computationally expensive. Media
size is important for controlling the energy transfer within the
mill and influences product size so we consider a range of media
sizes ranging from 25 mm (very coarse) to 9 mm (near the usual
size for operation in an M10000 mill). These are given in Table 2.
For the 25 mm media the number required to fill the mill to 80%
of the available grinding chamber volume is around 0.4 million.
This rises to 1.8 million for 15 mm media and to 8.5 million for
the 9 mm media case. Media of 3.5–6 mm is also often used
and so these are also included in the table for comparison even
though DEM results for these are not presented in this paper.
The model size for 6 mm would be 29 million particles and
144 million for 3.5 mm. For each media size the particles are uni-
formly distributed within a range of ±2.5% of the mean quoted
size.
 P.W. Cleary et al. / Minerals Engineering 79 (2015) 220–238
Table 2
DEM model size for different media sizes with the 9, 15 and 25 mm cases used in this
study.
Media diameter (mm) Number of particles (million)
25 0.4
15 1.8
9 8.5
6 29
3.5 144
The particle properties are as follows:
 Media are ceramic balls which are genuinely highly spherical
and so are represented in the DEM model as spheres. This is
important since non-sphericity of grinding media in stirred
mills has been shown to strongly and adversely change the
grinding action for stirred mills (Sinnott et al., 2011).
 The specific gravity of the ceramic media is 2.7 (this can vary up
to 3.5 depending on the media supplier and specific media
type). This value was chosen as it is a representative generic
value for currently available grinding media.
 The media–media friction coefficient used for the base case was
0.4 whilst the media-liner friction was 0.3 for base case condi-
tions. Since we are interested in understanding the milling per-
formance of the Isamill for a range of grinding media and since
the precise friction values for each specific media are not easily
available, we have taken the approach of choosing a representa-
tive range (from moderate friction at 0.3 to high friction at 0.75)
and then testing the sensitivity of the model to friction values
within this range.
 The coefficient of restitution used for the base case was 0.6 for
media–media collisions and 0.5 for media-liner ones. An impor-
tant issue to keep in mind when considering the coefficient of
restitution is that there is either a powder or slurry in between
the media particles during collisions. So these contacts in the
DEM model here represent not just the intrinsic restitution of
the media but also the effect of the interstitial material in
absorbing some of the collision energy. Since there is a variety
of media available each with somewhat different material prop-
erties and since these values cannot be easily measured or esti-
mated from first principles and since we need to account for the
powder/slurry effect, we choose sensible base case values
(ranging from moderately inelastic at 0.4 to reasonably elastic
at 0.8) and then test the sensitivity of the model to reasonable
variations within this range.
The average solid fraction of the media charge (as measured
from the DEM model) when it is packed into the operating mill
is 0.53. Note that this is more dilated than the dense packing limit
of spherical particles due to the shear between the layers of media.
Following usual practice for these types of mills we will refer to
disc-tip speed as the measure of the impellor rotation rate. For base
case conditions we use a tip speed of 22 m/s, as given by Burford
and Clark (2007) for a 3000 l Isamill (which corresponds to a rota-
tion rate of 300 rpm). We then explore the effect of varying this
within the range 20–24 m/s.
The usual operating range of the Isamill in terms of fill level is
reported to 70–90% by volume. We therefore use an 80% fill level
for the base case conditions and then test sensitivity of the model
predictions to variations within the stated operating range.
The normal spring stiffness used for the contact model was
106 N/m. This gave average overlaps of 0.75%, 0.35% and 0.2% of
the media diameter when using 9, 15 and 25 mm media respec-
tively, which is characteristic of good model accuracy. The tangen-
tial stiffness was half this value. The Cundall number for these
223
simulations running on a single core Intel CPU (defined as the
number of particle timesteps performed per CPU second) was
1.1  105.
4. The importance of gravity in the performance of the Isamill
The centrifugal force, based on a tip speed for the discs of 22 m/
s and a radius of 0.7 m, is 691 m/s2 or around 70g-force. An
assumption that could possibly be made for modelling the
Isamill is to neglect gravity on the basis that it is negligible com-
pared to the centrifugal force. Such an assumption is implicit in
the classification of stirred and high intensity agitated mills. A
key difference is supposed to be that the stirred mills are limited
by gravity whereas the high intensity mills are not so limited
and so can operate at higher speeds and energy intensities.
However, it is instructive to perform a DEM simulation of the
Isamill in the absence of gravity to test the correctness of this type
of assumption.
Fig. 2 shows the steady state distribution of media in the DEM
model of the M10000 Isamill when gravity is not included in the
model. The very high centrifugal force is very good at throwing
media radially outwards and so it is distributed around the shell
of the mill in a layer whose depth is determined by the volumetric
fill level. In this case, the fill level is 80% so a cylindrical volume
around the shaft equal to 20% of the grinding chamber volume is
empty. It is noteworthy that the particle speed is extremely uni-
form and around 1 m/s. This means that the whole charge is essen-
tially rotating as a near rigid body at a speed that is a factor of 20
lower than the tip speed at the edge of the disc. This means that the
media forms a relatively quiescent centrifuged bed around the mill
shell. The power draw predicted for this mill simulation is only
100 kW, which is extremely small compared to the installed power
which would typically be 3 MW for such a mill. This flow predic-
tion does not correctly represent the behaviour of the Isamill.
The reason for such a weak flow in the mill arises from the nat-
ure of the interaction of the particles with the discs on the impel-
lor. Any particle that is able to contact one of the discs is
immediately flung away from its surface. This means that the discs
are all surrounded by small gap into which particles only rarely
travel. Since the discs drive the entire flow and are the source of
energy to the particle motion, it is critical to have a good level of
contact between discs and media. However, in this case there is
only very poor frictional contact between the discs and the bed
(which is constantly being pushed away). This leads to media mov-
ing at only around 1 m/s and a very small power draw.
Fig. 2. Radial distribution of media when gravity is not included in the DEM model.
224 P.W. Cleary et al. / Minerals Engineering 79 (2015) 220–238

What is missing in this model is a restoring force that causes the

particles, once flung away from the discs, to return and to generate
new, longer and stronger interactions with the discs. Gravity plays
this critical role in the mill by providing a restoring force that pulls
particles downwards and due to interaction with other particles to
then be pressed sideways against the impellor discs. This hydro-
static charge pressure, generated by gravity, ensures that the
media bed is constantly pressed against the discs and therefore
enables significant energy transfer to the adjacent media that are
then significantly accelerated in the azimuthal direction. This pro-
duces much faster media speeds, strong gradients in these speeds
with distance from the discs and much higher power draw. So
although, it is often thought that agitated mills are controlled
solely by the centrifugal acceleration generated by the high rota-
tion rates, gravity still plays a critical role in controlling the perfor-
mance and the magnitude of gravity still limits the performance of Fig. 3. Media distribution in a vertical slice of the Isamill for the base case operating
the mill. This is demonstrated by the following DEM Isamill models conditions and 9 mm media. Particles coloured by speed with dark blue shows
in which gravity is included. stationary particles, green mid-speed particles around 2.5 m/s and red shows high
speed particles of 5 m/s or higher. (For interpretation of the references to colour in
this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

5. Media dynamics in the Isamill

The media flow in and performance of the M10000 was simu-

lated for the base case conditions with 9 mm media and including
gravity in the calculation. Figs. 3 and 4a show the media distribu-
tion and speed in a vertical slice along the axis of the Isamill and
in an axial slice around one of the central grinding discs, respec-
tively. The particles are coloured by speed with dark blue being
for stationary particles, green for mid-speed particles around
2.5 m/s whilst red shows high speed particles of 5 m/s or higher.
The first observation is that the solution is radically different to
that shown in Fig. 2 when gravity is absent. Note that the views
and colouring are the same for Figs. 2 and 4a and that these are
directly comparable. These comparisons demonstrate the critical
role that gravity plays in the operation of the mill by providing a
restoring force that maintains media contact with the impellor.
Once the discs of the impellor are able to engage with the sur-
rounding grinding media (because of the inclusion of gravity) they
generate much stronger flow that is very spatially dependent. All
the media between the discs and in an annular layer around the
discs are coloured green indicating that they move at around
2.5 m/s.
In the lower half of the mill, the charge below the level of the
discs and near the feed end wall are coloured mid-blue indicating
that this material is relatively slowly moving at between 0.4 and
0.7 m/s. The hydrostatic pressure gradient generated by gravity
means that the charge presses downwards and is more densely
packed and less able to be sheared by the motion of the discs. In
contrast, in the upper half of the mill, the lower bed pressures
enable all of the charge to move at 2.5 m/s or above (with the par-
ticles all coloured green up to red). On each side of each of the discs
there is a nearly vertical band of fast moving particles (coloured
red). These correspond to jets of media being ejected at high
speeds from the holes in the discs. This is a critical aspect of the
media behaviour and will be discussed in more detail shortly.
The classifier produces an annulus of fast moving material swirling
with the classifier cage. The space within the classifier is empty of Fig. 4. Media distribution in an axial slice around one of the impellor discs and an
oblique view of the whole charge of the Isamill for the base case operating
grinding media so there is no need to section the geometry to show conditions and 9 mm media, (a) in a slice around one disc, and (b) exterior of full
inside. At the top of the mill above the middle of the classifier is a charge shown obliquely.
jet where fast moving material from the classifier region is ejected
upwards towards the mill shell where it splits into branches trav-
elling in both the feed and discharge axial directions. There is also are not at either end of the grinding chamber. The space available
significant high speed flow of media through and from the disc between the feed end wall and the first disc is larger than between
holes in the end disc closest to the discharge end with the particles the other discs so the jet here spreads further in the axial direction.
moving radially outwards. The jet structure is very symmetric on There are some small areas of red colouring on either side of the
either side of each disc and is nearly identical for all the discs that discs in the lower part of the mill where the high speed media
 P.W. Cleary et al. / Minerals Engineering 79 (2015) 220–238 225

within the disc holes interacts with the nearby bed outside but Fig. 4b shows the outside surface of the charge from an oblique
they are small because of the high confining bed pressure. side on view. The high speed axial bands (red) generated by the jets
Fig. 4a shows the distribution of media around one representa- of media thrown by and from the disc holes are clearly visible
tive central grinding disc viewed along the axis of the mill. The mill along the upper surface of the charge. In between, the media is
has a fill level of 80% so 20% of the grinding chamber volume coloured green as they move with speeds consistent with shearing
(excluding the inaccessible volume inside the classifier) is empty from the discs surfaces below. The outer layer of the charge in the
of media. This consists of two principle areas of significant voidage lower half of the mill is slow moving corresponding to the slow
and one minor one. The largest void is in the upper half of the mill moving region observed in Figs. 3 and 4a. The small void against
starting directly above the impellor shaft and extending to the the shell on the upper right due to the lower speed material not
edge of the disc in the direction to which the disc rotates. The sec- being fully centrifuged on the upper rear of the shell is also visible.
ond large void is a region below and to the right of the shaft (as Fig. 5 shows the behaviour of the charge in a vertical slice
seen in Fig. 4a). The small void region is near the top on the left through the axis of the mill at three closely spaced times as one
where the motion of the media is not sufficiently fast to centrifuge set of holes at the top of the disc pass through the sectioning plane.
the particles against the shell and they are able to separate for a The particles are coloured by axial velocity with blue indicating
brief period. particles moving towards the feed end and red indicating particles
The flow structure is quite complex and involves three major moving towards the discharge end. Green particles are circulating
regions: circumferentially with little axial motion. In Fig. 5a, the residual
motion from the passage of the previous disc hole is visible. The
1. There is a relatively slowly moving region (mid-blue) of parti- outward moving jets are still strong because the period between
cles that are outside the radius of the impellor disc and which disc arrivals is quite short. In Fig. 5b, a hole is just arriving in the
are moving at under 1 m/s. These particles are too far from slice of particles shown. Reasonably symmetric regions of dark
the impellor and the bed pressure is too high for them to be blue and red are visible directly adjacent to the top of the disc as
strongly mobilised. the media within this hole starts to discharge through this vertical
2. The disc holes play a critical role in media transport that has to slice of the mill charge. In Fig. 5c, these regions have strengthened
date not been understood. These holes are only partially filled and increased in size as the full jets of media flowing from the hole
when they leave the upper void region on the right. As they pass generate significant entrainment of particles both radially outward
through the packed bed in the lower half of the mill they fill up
due to the higher bed pressure in the lower parts of the mill
pushing particles into the holes. Once they rise to the 9 o’clock
position they enter a region that is less densely packed which
allows the particles to then be thrown radially outwards by
the centrifugal force resulting from the disc rotational motion
with speeds of around 15 m/s (giving around 45g-force acceler-
ation). This generates strong high speed jets of particles that
move axially away from each side of the disc. These jets are
the red1 coloured particles on the left of Fig. 4a and red regions
in the upper half of the mill in Fig. 3. The particles in the jets tra-
vel outwards in straight lines until they encounter the shell
where they form a thin bed. They join the particles travelling
around the shell to produce a high speed layer of particles mov-
ing around the shell from the 12 o’clock position to nearly the 3
o’clock position. The discharge of particles from the disc holes
continues during full length of their passage through the upper
void, but the flow decreases steadily in strength as the volume
of particles remaining in the disc hole that are available to be
ejected declines.
3. There is a circulatory flow near the shaft. These particles which
are coloured green move at reasonably high speed because they
are between the disc and its neighbour discs and their motion is
therefore driven by the shear forces from the flat sides of these
discs. This fast moving annular band is (radially) thicker in the
lower half of the mill both because of the greater bed pressure
in the lower half of the mill and due to the influence of the jets
from the disc holes in the upper left quadrant (Fig. 4a). The jets
split the upward moving stream of green coloured particles
entrained by the discs (on the left) with the outer half driven
radially outwards towards the shell and the inner half continu-
ing to flow around the shaft. The latter stream then separates
from the shaft at around the 1 o’clock position and travels out-
ward where it rejoins the outer layer flowing around the shell.
The lower void is a shadowing effect of the shaft caused by the
flow separation at 1 o’clock.

Fig. 5. Axial flow of media in a central vertical slice of the Isamill at three closely
spaced times (a–c) driven by discharge jets from the disc holes in the upper part of
1
For interpretation of colour in Figs. 4 and 26, the reader is referred to the web the mill for the base case operating conditions and 9 mm media. The particles are
version of this article. coloured by their axial speed.
226 P.W. Cleary et al. / Minerals Engineering 79 (2015) 220–238

and axially away from both sides of the disc. The flow structures
elsewhere are little changed as these are in equilibrium. These dis-
tributions are generally consistent with the PEPT derived distribu-
tions of van der Westhuizen et al. (2011). In particular the radial
variation of media density and speed and the importance of the
disc holes in imparting motion to the media were observed exper-
imentally and support the detailed observations of the flow struc-
ture made here using DEM.
Summarising the key elements that control the charge dynam-
ics in the Isamill:
 The bed settles in the mill so there is greater bed pressure at the
bottom.
 This controls the pressure that bed applies to the discs and
therefore the degree of frictional engagement between discs
and bed.
 If the particle speed is higher than the disc tip speed then the
centrifugal force controls the particles and they separate from
the disc loosing traction and power input.
 If the particle speed is lower than the disc tip speed then the
bed pressure dominates over the centrifugal force and the par-
ticles are pressed harder against the discs. This greater traction
leads to more power input accelerating the particles.
 In steady state these two effects are in dynamic balance and the
centrifugal force is equal to gravity.
This allows a simple calculation of the average speed of the par-
pffiffiffiffiffiffi
ticles near the grinding discs which is gR, where R is the disc
radius. For the M10000 mill this means that the theoretical media
speed near discs is 2.62 m/s. The particles near the discs in Fig. 3
are green which corresponds to a speed of around 2.5 ± 0.3 m/s,
so the DEM prediction of the particle speed matches closely the
theoretical value. It is important to appreciate that there is no
explicit dependence in this force balance on the speed of the
impellor. The media speeds are significantly lower (by an order
of magnitude) than the disc tip speed of 22 m/s, which indicates
that there is significant slip between the discs and the closest
media.
The critical role of the disc holes can be summarised as:
system and from any slurry component, this is a reasonable predic-
tion. The absolute value of the prediction is also less important
than the relative changes produced by variations in the operating
conditions and media. Of the energy input by the impellor, 64% is
dissipated in media–media collisions with 36% dissipated in
media-boundary collisions. Of this, only 2.2% is dissipated in the
normal component of the collisions whilst a dominant 34.0% was
dissipated in the shear collisions by media sliding along the solid
surfaces. The energy dissipation is split between the impellor and
mill shell was 35% and 1% respectively. This means that the wear
rate on the impellor is dominated by abrasion and is 35 times
higher than the wear on the mill shell.
Since the purpose of generating the motion observed earlier
within the media is to generate grinding of the interstitial fine
material, it is useful to examine the way in which the mill con-
sumes the energy provided. Fig. 6 shows the spatial distribution
of the time averaged normal and shear power dissipated by the
media. This data is collected by calculating the energy dissipation
in the normal and shear directions of each contact (by the force
components given in Eqs. (1) and (2)) and averaging this onto a
cylindrically symmetric data collection grid. This gives the distri-
bution of energy dissipation by the media and the impellor.
Fig. 6a shows that the normal energy dissipation is large in the
annular region between the outer edges of the grinding discs and
the shell which corresponds to where the bed is most densely
packed (due to the centrifugal force) and where the circumferential
shear causes collisions between adjacent layers of media. There is
also a narrow band of high normal dissipation extending from the
outer region along the side surfaces of each disc. The normal power
is moderate (green) between the discs from the radial distance half
way from the shaft to the outside of the discs. Closer to the shaft
there is little normal dissipation.
In contrast, the shear energy dissipation is maximal in a small
region around the outside of each disc and extending radially
inwards towards the disc holes. There is also reasonably strong

 The bed pressure forces media into the disc holes as they pass
through the lower sections of the bed.
 As the filled disc holes reach the dynamic voids in the upper half
of the mill, they spray out of both sides of the disc forming
strong radial jets.
 The dynamic pressure created by the jets of beads contributes
to the generation of the voids.
 The jets create a highly non-symmetric media distribution and
velocity field.
 The holes are a dominant mode of azimuthal transport and mix-
ing of the charge around each disc.

The observed flow pattern suggests that there could be multiple

modes of breakage operating in the Isamill. Abrasion between
media occurs in areas of high shear. This is thought to be the dom-
inant source of particle size reduction. But there could be an
important contribution from impact breakage as the jets of media
hit media at the periphery of the voids around the discs.

6. Power draw and energy utilisation in the Isamill

The prediction of the power consumption by the mill arising

from the charge motion using DEM for the base case conditions
and 9 mm media is 1.11 MW. Compared to the maximum installed Fig. 6. Spatial distribution of (a) normal power, and (b) shear (or tangential) power
power of 3 MW and after excluding power usage by the drive dissipated by the media collisions for the M10000 Isamill with 9 mm media.
 P.W. Cleary et al. / Minerals Engineering 79 (2015) 220–238
shear dissipation in the region between the shell and the outside of
the discs produced by the circumferential shear flow generated by
the rotation of the impellor. An important observation is that there
is very little shear energy dissipation in the spaces between the
discs. This occurs because the discs tend to cause the media in
between to rotate with the impellor almost as a rigid body albeit
at a much slower rotation speed than the impellor due to the large
amount of slip between it and the charge. This means that there is
little shear between particles within these regions – which leads to
very little energy dissipation. It should be noted that the maximum
shear energy dissipation levels (red) are an order of magnitude
higher than the maximum normal energy dissipation, indicating
that collisions are dominated by the tangential frictional
interactions and that energy dissipation is dominantly by shear.
This means that the primary grinding action of the mill is by
abrasion in the intense shear zones between discs and media
and between the layers of media outside the discs that are
sliding over each other in the circumferential direction. The
distribution of shear energy dissipation in Fig. 6b is therefore an
indication of the spatial distribution of the grinding occurring
within the mill.
The spatial distributions only tell part of the story of how the
mill transfers energy into the charge. It is also useful to look at
the frequency distributions of the different collision energies and
how these vary between different types of collisions. Fig. 7 shows
the energy spectra for the M10000 Isamill for the base case
conditions and 9 mm media. These are best displayed on log–log
scales. Fig. 7a shows the distribution over all collisions. This can
be disaggregated into the media–media contributions (Fig. 7b)
and the media–impellor (Fig. 7c) ones and the media–shell
collisions (Fig. 7d).
The media–media interactions (Fig. 7b) are the dominant com-
ponent of collisions in the Isamill so the media–media spectrum
Fig. 7. Energy spectra for the M10000 Isamill with 9 mm media; (a) all collisions, (b) media–media collisions, (c) media–impellor collisions, and (d) media–shell collisions.
The vertical line shows the modal average (or most common collision energy) for the total energy dissipated in each collision which is used to characterise the distribution.
227
and the overall spectrum are very similar. This spectrum has a peak
(the most common collision energy in the mill) of 5 lJ with a cor-
responding collision rate of 20 million collisions/s. This is a very
weak energy level for the most common type of collision. With
increasing energy above this level, the collision rate declines shar-
ply with 1 mJ collisions occurring at a rate of 1 million collisions/s.
For a collision energy level of 0.1 J (quite strong collisions) the
occurrence rate is only 2000 collisions/s (which is very small con-
sidering that there are 8.5 million particles in the system). The
highest energy collisions recorded in the Isamill are of the order
of 1 J with an occurrence rate of only 10 collisions/s. For energies
smaller than the modal peak, the collision rates also declines shar-
ply. The overall contribution of this tail of the collision spectrum to
the energy dissipation is quite small because of both the declining
frequency and the very weak dissipation per collision. Separate
spectra are shown for the normal and shear components and well
as the total energy dissipated in each collision. All three have the
same form, but the shear spectrum is higher than the normal
reflecting the much higher contribution of the shear component
(as was observed in Fig. 6).
Fig. 7c shows the spectra for the collisions between the impellor
and the media. The shear and total energy spectra are indistin-
guishable except at very low energy levels reflecting the absolute
dominance of shear as the mechanism of interaction between the
impellor discs and the grinding media. The most common energy
(the peak in the total energy) is at 28 mJ with a collision rate of
4  105 collisions/s. This energy level is around 500 times higher
than the most common collision energy for the media–media col-
lisions. This indicates that the media collisions with the discs will
be significantly better at breaking interstitial fine particles than
collisions between media particles that are further away. It should
also be noted that the form of this spectrum is quite different to the
previous one with the distribution heavily skewed to high energy.
228 P.W. Cleary et al. / Minerals Engineering 79 (2015) 220–238

The upper end of the distribution is very sharp with the discs being
unable to generate any collisions with energies above the 0.1 J
level. So although the majority of media–media collisions are much
weaker than the media–impellor collisions there is a small subset
of these that are actually much stronger (with energies between
0.1 and 1 J). These relatively low probability but high energy colli-
sions are more characteristic of an impact breakage machine than
an abrasion dominated mill. These collisions are generated by the
particles in the high speed jets ejected from the disc holes colliding
with the relatively slow moving media circulating around the shell
(see Figs. 3 and 4).
The spectrum of collisions with the mill shell is somewhat sim-
ilar to that of the impellor with a similar energy range but with a
lower energy peak at 0.18 mJ and lower collision rates for the
higher energy levels. It is interesting to note that for the mill shell,
that the shear and normal spectra have very different forms with
the shear having a weak double peak and the normal peak being
between these. The weaker collisions that occur with the shell
reflect the fact that the impellor is driving the flow of media and
the shell is absorbing a proportion of the energy that is not dissi-
pated by the media in between.

7. Performance variation with media size for the base case

Media size is usually considered to be an important determi-

nant of the degree of comminution in a mill. It is therefore impor-
tant to understand how the mill performance and how the grinding
environment changes with changes in grinding media. Here we
consider three sizes of the spherical ceramic media, 9, 15 and
25 mm. The results for 9 mm media were previously presented
as the base case for this study.
Fig. 8 shows the media distributions around a central disc for
the three particles sizes from a view along the axis of the mill.
The distribution for the 9 mm case has previously been discussed
in detail for Fig. 4a. Fig. 8b shows that the distribution for
15 mm media is very similar to that found for 9 mm media. The
colour gradation is less continuous as the particles are observably
larger but the flow pattern is very similar with the same key fea-
tures of a lower packed bed, the separation of the upward stream
on the left into one that travels around the mill shell and the other
which passes over the shaft leaving the large upper void and the
smaller lower void to the lower right of the shaft. The jets of par-
ticles that are ejected from the disc holes are also very similar.
The largest difference is that particles adjacent to the disc holes
in the lower half of the mill show higher speeds (being yellow
through to red) indicating that the influence of the disc holes is
being felt further out (axially) from the discs than was the case
for the 9 mm media.
In contrast, the flow pattern and distribution of charge for the
25 mm media (Fig. 8c) is quite different to the previous cases.
Particles are now distributed more symmetrically around the cir-
cumference of the mill, there is a thick high speed layer of charge
(yellow and red) circulating around the inner half of the mill, the Fig. 8. Media distribution in an axial slice of the Isamill for the base case operating
jets from the disc holes are much weaker and the upward flow conditions with media sizes of (a) 9 mm, (b) 15 mm, and (c) 25 mm. Particles
coloured by speed. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure
on the right only weakly splits into two much less distinct streams.
legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
Finally, the void in the upper left quadrant against the mill shell
has vanished. This indicates that the use of coarse media strongly
affects the nature of the flow within the mill. This raises an inter- shows the distribution for 9 mm media as discussed in Fig. 3. For
esting point in that much experimental characterisation for mills is 15 mm media (Fig. 9b) there is again very little difference from
performed at laboratory scale with relatively large media. The the 9 mm case. The largest changes are that there are some addi-
dependence observed here indicates that measurements from tional void regions at the very top of the mill between the jets
scales with small numbers of large media may not be as represen- ejected from the disc holes and the average speed of the media is
tative of full size mill performance as hoped. modestly higher between the disc (green now compared to green
Fig. 9 shows the distribution of charge and the media velocities grading to light blue for the 9 mm case). The differences for the
in a vertical axial slice of the mill for the three media sizes. Fig. 9a 25 mm media are much larger with:
 P.W. Cleary et al. / Minerals Engineering 79 (2015) 220–238 229

1.35

1.30

1.25

Power (MW)
1.20

1.15

1.10

1.05
8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26
Media size (mm)

Fig. 10. Variation of power draw with media size.

laboratory scale mill. Farber et al. (2011) performed physical

Fig. 9. Media distribution in a vertical slice of the Isamill for the base case operating
conditions with media sizes of (a) 9 mm, (b) 15 mm, and (c) 25 mm. Particles
coloured by speed with dark blue shows stationary particles, green mid-speed
particles around 2.5 m/s and red shows high speed particles of 5 m/s or higher. (For
interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred
to the web version of this article.)
 the media speed between discs now mostly yellow (which is the
reason for the yellow/orange cylindrical band of high speed
media visible in Fig. 8c),
 the speed of the media below the discs at the bottom of the mill
is now light blue (indicating that the discs are now able to agi-
tate the entire charge), and
 the high speed jets from the disc holes in the upper half of the
mill are now much shorter and do not reach the mill shell.
Fig. 10 shows the variation in mill power draw with media size.
experiments with ceramic media in an M4 Isamill and showed that
decreasing media size gave decreasing power consumption which
supports the observation from the current DEM model of the full
scale M10000 Isamill.
The energy spectra shown in Fig. 7 provide a strong character-
isation of the grinding environment within the mill. The form of
such spectra typically does not change when changing operating
conditions and media within sensible ranges. What does change
is usually the location of the modal peak (with the most common
collision energy) and sometimes the breadth of the distribution.
Here we will use the most common collision energy across all col-
lisions to characterise these distributions and will examine the
way that this value changes with changes in mill conditions. The
peak collision energy was 0.68 mJ for 25 mm media. This declines
sharply with decreasing power in a manner that is best repre-
sented logarithmically. Fig. 11 shows the change in peak collision
energy with media size. The decrease is almost linear which means
that the dependence of the collision energy on media size is geo-
metric. This is consistent with the laboratory scale studies of
Jayasundara et al. (2012) who showed that the frequency and
energy of collisions both decreased with media size and that mill
efficiency increased for small media size. The peak collision energy
reported here appears to be approximately proportional to the
square of the ratio of the media masses. Kwade et al. (1996) also
showed that specific energy consumption in a stirred mill is depen-
dent on the media size. Farber et al. (2011) considered ceramic
media in an M4 Isamill and showed that decreasing media size
1.000
Peak collision energy (mJ)

This is largest for the largest media (at 1.29 MW for 25 mm) and
decreases slowly and almost linearly with decreasing media size.
For the 9 mm media the power draw has declined to 1.11 MW. 0.100
The principle reason for this media size dependence is that the size
of the shear zones (in this case these are around the grinding discs)
tends to be of order of a dozen particle diameters. So as the parti-
cles become smaller the highly sheared regions around the discs 0.010
become spatially smaller. This is one of the reasons why the high
speed circulating layer of particles is visible in Fig. 9b as the high
shear region for 25 mm has expanded axially so that it now inter-
sects the plane used to choose which particles are visible in this 0.001
image. The linear decline in the size of the shear zones then leads 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26
to a linear decline in the power dissipation in these regions which Media size (mm)
is responsible for the linear decline in the power draw. This has
also been demonstrated by Jayasundara et al. (2008) in a Fig. 11. Variation of peak collision energy with media size.
230 P.W. Cleary et al. / Minerals Engineering 79 (2015) 220–238
gave the greatest size reduction ratio and improved milling effi-
ciency. Enderle (2008) presented a model for estimating best
choice for media size based on media kinetic energy/particle
cross-sectional area. Jankovic (2003) showed for Netzsch mills that
coarser media were more efficient for grinding coarser feeds, but
that as particle size reduced to below 10 lm then smaller media
were more efficient. This supports the idea that media size needs
to be matched to the choice of feed size for optimal grinding which
is dependent on the power draw and specific power draw decreas-
ing with media size as found in this study.
8. Effect of fill level
Jayasundara et al. (2010) showed that for high fill levels in a lab-
oratory scale mill there is significant energy dissipation which does
not contribute to grinding and they proposed that there is an opti-
mal fill level below 90% that is the most energy efficient.
Conversely, Altun et al. (2013) indicated that maximum media fill
levels are generally recommended for the best grinding perfor-
mance in industrial scale horizontally stirred mills. The largest rea-
sonable operating range for fill levels of the M10000 Isamill
appears to be from 70% to 90% with a most common operating
level of 80%, so this is the range investigated in this study.
Fig. 12 shows the media distribution and speed for these three fill
levels. The view shown is an axial slice through the axis of the mill
with particles coloured by speed using the same colour map as
used in Figs. 8 and 9. The base case of 80% fill is as previously dis-
cussed in Fig. 9b. When the fill level is reduced to 70% (Fig. 12a)
then there are no drastic changes to the flow but a number of
important differences are observed. The disc recirculation ‘‘bub-
bles’’ generated by and located between the high speed jets ejected
by the disc holes extend further reaching the shell whilst still mov-
ing at high speed (these particles are still red) because there are
much fewer particles in this region with which to collide and
therefore retard or dissipate these jets. There is visible dilation of
Fig. 12. Variation of the media distribution and speed for three fill levels, (a) 70%,
(b) 80%, and (c) 90% for 15 mm media. The colours have the same meaning as in
Fig. 9. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader
is referred to the web version of this article.)
the charge with the media no longer being densely packed in the
upper part of the mill. The charge in the lower part of the mill is
more stagnant and the media between the discs is moving observ-
ably slower (being now coloured light blue instead of green for the
80% fill level).
For higher fill (90% as shown in Fig. 12c), the recirculation bub-
bles generated by the jets from the disc holes are significantly
reduced with the high speed of the media (coloured red) rapidly
damped not able to extend beyond the edges of the discs. This
occurs because the higher fill level results in significantly greater
packing of media in the top space of the mill and this generates sig-
nificant damping of the jets which are then significantly shortened.
The greater bed weight and stronger packing means that the media
at the bottom of the mill is able to be sheared by the discs and
moves quite a lot faster (now coloured light blue instead of dark
blue). The speed of media between the discs is also increased sig-
nificantly. The higher fill causes the charge to press more firmly
against the discs increasing the degree of frictional engagement
and therefore the flow of energy from the impellor to the media
which is then much better entrained by the motion of the impellor.
The fill level therefore has a strong influence on the charge beha-
viour by influencing the degree of frictional connection between
impellor and charge and by controlling the packing density in
the upper part of the mill that controls the effect of the jets from
the disc holes.
Fig. 13 shows the variation in mill power draw with fill level.
Data is presented for all three media sizes. The power draw
increases sharply with fill level – in a way that is faster than linear
with the change in fill level. The functional behaviour of power
draw with fill level is very similar for the 15 and 25 mm media
sizes. The gradual decline in power draw with decreasing media
size is demonstrated by each media size curve being below and
parallel to those of the larger media. The maximum power draw
at 90% fill level is 61% of the typical installed power for this mill
– which is a very reasonable prediction.
Fig. 14 shows the variation of the percentage of energy
absorbed by the impellor (which controls the wear rate of the
impellor) with fill level for two different media sizes. For 25 mm
media and a 70% fill level, this is around 25%. This means that
25% of the energy consumed by the mill is used to abrade the
impellor. This is a very significant fraction of energy wastage and
liner wear and is the cost of achieving the energy intensities else-
where in the mill to produce the fine product sizes that the mill is
designed to produce. The impellor energy absorption is largest for
the largest media size because these particles have the strongest
collision energies and so do the most damage. It is largest for the
smallest fill level because the mobility of the particles is largest
and so there are relatively less media–media collisions for the
same amount of media–impellor collisions. As the fill level
2.0
25 mm
15 mm
1.8
9 mm
1.6
Power (MW)
1.4
1.2
1.0
0.8
65 70 75 80 85 90 95
Fill level (%)
Fig. 13. Variation of power draw with fill level for three different media sizes.
 P.W. Cleary et al. / Minerals Engineering 79 (2015) 220–238 231

26.0 0.11
25 mm
Impellor Energy Absorption (%)

25.0 15 mm
0.10

Impact/abrasion energy
24.0
0.09
23.0
0.08
22.0

21.0 0.07

20.0
25 mm 0.06
19.0 15 mm
0.05
18.0 65 70 75 80 85 90 95
65 70 75 80 85 90 95
Fill level (%)
Fill level (%)
Fig. 16. Variation of the ratio of impact to absrasion energy dissipated with fill level
Fig. 14. Variation of the percentage of energy absorbed by the impellor with fill for two different media sizes.
level for two different media sizes.

and is more pressed against the mill surfaces and the balance of
0.18 impact to shear increases more strongly in favour of the shear.
As the media size decreases the impact fraction of the liner energy
0.16
absorption also decreases.
Peak collision energy (mJ)

0.14 Overall, the fill level has a strong, non-linear effect on the mill
0.12 performance within the operating range of 70–90% of the grinding
chamber filled with media.
0.10

0.08

0.06 9. Effect of angular speed

0.04
0.02
0.00
65 70 75 80
Fill level (%)
Fig. 15. Variation of the peak collision energy with fill level for 15 mm media sizes.
increases then the fraction of energy that is absorbed by the impel-
lor decreases. As the media size is decreased, the fraction of energy
absorbed by the impellor also increases. Further reductions in
media size would be expected to lead to a steady secular decline
in the fraction of the energy absorbed by the impellor.
Fig. 15 shows the change in peak collision energy with fill level
for the 15 mm media. The peak energy is 0.36 mJ for an 80% fill
level. For the lower 70% fill level this peak energy level is reduced
modestly to 0.25 mJ which is consistent with the small change
observed in the flow pattern. For the 90% fill level though, the peak
collision energy rises sharply to 1.6 mJ which reflects the much
stronger frictional engagement with the discs, the faster media
speeds and the much larger fraction of the mill charge which is
strongly agitated.
Finally, we consider the ratio of the impact to abrasion energy
absorption by the mill liner (both impellor and shell). This indi-
cates the relative contribution of the impact damage (as measured
by the normal component of the energy absorption of these sur-
faces to the abrasion damage (as measured by the shear energy
absorption). The variation of this fraction with fill level is shown
for two media sizes in Fig. 16. The impact contribution is small
compared to the shear in all circumstances which is consistent
with the milling action and liner wear mechanisms being domi-
nated by shear. The ratio is largest for the largest media and the
smallest fill level as these particles have the most opportunity to
collide with the liner and have the largest kinetic energy when
they do. As the fill level increases, the charge becomes less mobile
The tip speed is often used to characterise the speed of stirred
mills. This is the speed of the outside edge of the grinding impellor
(discs in the case of the Isamill) and is given by the product of the
85 90 95 impellor rotation rate and the disc radius (0.7 m in this case). 22 m/
s is a typical choice for the tip speed. Burford and Clark (2007) indi-
cate that a usual operating speed range for this mill is 21–23 m/s.
We explore the mill performance behaviour over a slightly broader
range of 20–24 m/s to fully capture the variation.
Fig. 17 shows the charge and speed distribution in a vertical
slice along the mill axis. Comparing the high speed (Fig. 17a) to
the base case with 22 m/s (Fig. 17b), the flow and media distribu-
tion is not distinguishable. All the elements of the flow match clo-
sely, so increasing the tip speed within the upper half of its
operating range has little effect on the nature or structure of the
flow. For 20 m/s (Fig. 17c) there are reasonable differences from
the base case. The most striking difference is the large reduction
in high speed particles (over 5 m/s and shown as red). These are
restricted to a small region in the upper right quadrant. The split-
ting of the upward moving particles on the left of the shaft into two
streams one directed towards the shell and the other flowing
around the shaft has been eliminated leading to a substantial
reduction in the upper void space. The absence of this largely open
area then significantly impedes the development of the high speed
jets discharging from the disc holes. This means that much of the
key structure observed at higher speed is suppressed or absent.
The void below and to the right of the shaft is slightly reduced in
size whilst the small void against the shell in the upper left quad-
rant is largely unchanged. Together these suggest that lower
speeds are unlikely to be useful for operating this mill effectively
as the impellor is progressively unable to keep the charge suffi-
ciently agitated.
Fig. 18 shows the variation in mill power draw with disc tip
speed for two media sizes. The relationship is essentially linear
with an approximately 10% change in mill power for a 10% change
in tip speed. This behaviour is not dependent on the media size.
Jayasundara et al. (2010) also observed a linear dependence of
232 P.W. Cleary et al. / Minerals Engineering 79 (2015) 220–238
Fig. 17. Media distribution and speed in an axial slice near one of the impellor discs
for three disc tip speeds, (a) 24 m/s, (b) 22 m/s, and (c) 20 m/s.
power draw on impellor rotation rate. Isamill experiments by Gao
and Forssberg (1993) showed that higher disc speeds result in bet-
ter grinding performance due to the higher collision energies avail-
able. Fig. 19 shows the change in peak collision energy with disc tip
speed for 25 mm media. There is a gradual monotonic increase in
the energies of the collisions with increasing tip speed.
10. Effect of axial pressure gradient
If the Isamill is operated in dry conditions then the feed and
product particles are moved in the axial direction by forcing air
1.5
25 mm
1.4 15 mm
1.3
Power (MW)
1.2
1.1
1.0
0.9
20 21 22 23 24
Tip speed (m/s)
Fig. 18. Variation of mill power draw with disc tip speed for two media sizes.
0.8
Peak collision energy (mJ)
0.7
0.6
0.5
20 21 22 23 24
Tip speed (m/s)
Fig. 19. Change in the peak collision energy with fill level for 25 mm media.
through the mill. If it is operated as a wet mill, the slurry is pumped
from the feed to the discharge end. This creates a pressure gradient
along the mill which can influence the motion of the media and the
performance of the mill. The simplest way to create the overall
effect of pushing a fluid (air or slurry) along the mill is to include
an axial pressure gradient in the form of a body force in the axial
direction. We will consider three such pressure gradients with
total pressure drop between feed and discharge of 0 Pa (base case),
57 kPa and 114 kPa. The latter two are indicative of the pressures
typically used in a wet Isamill of this size.
Fig. 20 shows the media distribution and speed for different
axial pressure gradients. The pressure gradient exerts a force on
the media causing it to move axially towards the discharge end
of the mill. Gravity also pushes media towards the bottom of the
mill. The combination of these body forces means that the void
space all collects in the upper part of the feed end of the mill
(upper left in Fig. 20). The space between the discs and around
the classifier becomes densely packed whilst the flow at the dis-
charge end is quite dilute. As established earlier, the restoring force
that pushes media against the discs which controls the degree of
frictional engagement between the impellor and the charge and
therefore the energy transfer into the mill. The axial pressure force
also contributes to this critical restoring force. The additional
‘‘weight’’ of the media from a given axial location to the feed end
resulting from the pressure gradient pushes the charge more firmly
against the discs. This effect increases linearly with distance along
the mill. As the restoring forces increase along the mill the local
energy transfer efficiency increases and the media undergo greater
acceleration leading to an equilibrium velocity distribution for the
media that increases with distance along the mill. First we consider
 P.W. Cleary et al. / Minerals Engineering 79 (2015) 220–238 233

5.4
25 mm, 70%
4.9 15 mm, 70%
4.4 25 mm, 80%
15 mm, 80%
3.9

Power (MW)
3.4

2.9

2.4

1.9

1.4

0.9
0 60 120
Axial pressure drop (kPa)

Fig. 21. Effect of axial pressure gradient on power draw for different media sizes
and fill levels.

Fig. 20. Effect of axial pressure gradient for a 70% fill, (a) 57 kPa in a vertical slice,
(b) 114 kPa in a vertical slice, and (c) oblique view of the entire charge from the feed
end. The colours in (a) and (b) have the same meaning as in Fig. 9. (For
interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is
referred to the web version of this article.)
the case of an axial pressure drop of 57 kPa – which is shown in
Fig. 20a with particles coloured by their speed. For discs 1–3 where
there is little media above the shaft and the media below the shaft
is only poorly agitated, there is little contribution to grinding. For
discs 4 and 5, the flow structure and the media velocity distribu-
tion is very similar to that of the base case. For discs 6–8, they
are able to significantly better mobilise the charge and the media
moves at significantly higher speeds with substantial volumes of
media moving at more than 5 m/s (red colouring). The low speed
annulus of media (dark blue) around the shell is eliminated by disc
the original base case flow pattern. This indicates how dominant
the effect of a strong axial pressure gradient is on the dynamics
of the charge in the Isamill. Fig. 20c shows a three dimensional ren-
der of the entire Isamill charge so that the free surface region and
the spray of loose media in the empty space above can be seen. In
this case the particles are coloured by axial speed. The red at the
top indicates that particles are travelling towards the discharge
end and there is a slower return flow towards the feed end in
the bottom half of the mill.
Fig. 21 shows the variation of power draw with axial pressure
drop for different media sizes and fill levels. In all cases, there is
a very strong dependence of the power draw on the pressure drop
with more than a factor of three increase for a pressure drop of
114 kPa. This reflects the strong increase in frictional traction of
the discharge end discs against which the media is more firmly
pressed and to which significantly more energy is transferred lead-
ing to sharply larger power draw.
Fig. 22 shows the change in peak collision energy with axial
pressure drop for two media sizes. The form of the variation is sim-
ilar to that of the power draw but with larger magnitude changes
(around a factor 6 for 25 mm media and a factor 15 for 15 mm
media). This reflects the stronger collisions generated by the faster
moving particles that result from the increased traction between
charge and the impellor discs.
11. Effect of material properties
The collision properties of the media can vary both because of
differences in the composition, the surface treatment and due to
3.0
25 mm
2.5
Peak collision energy (mJ)

15 mm
5 with the particles coloured green between the outside of the disc
and the shell for discs 6–8. The classifier is also very effective at 2.0
generating a very strong swirling flow at the discharge end of the
mill. 1.5
Fig. 20b shows the matching charge distribution for a pressure
drop of 114 kPa. The effects are much stronger still. The charge
1.0
now has an internal free surface near the feed end, whose angle
is determined by the ratio between the pressure gradient and grav-
0.5
ity. The very high bed pressures generated within the charge for
discs 6–8 mean that there is very strong frictional engagement to
0.0
these discs which then strongly accelerates the media in this 0 60 120
region with all the particles between the discs being red (moving Axial pressure drop (kPa)
faster than 5 m/s) and the ones further out all moving at around
2.5 m/s (green). For this case, only the flow near disc 4 resembles Fig. 22. Effect of axial pressure gradient on power draw for different media sizes.
234 P.W. Cleary et al. / Minerals Engineering 79 (2015) 220–238

the presence of interstitial slurry when operated wet and fines
(potentially lubricating powder) when operated dry. It is useful
to understand the response of the machine to changes in these
properties.
11.1. Friction
The friction coefficient controls the limiting friction at which a
contact slides. For the base case, the particle–particle friction was
0.4 and the particle–wall friction was 0.3. It is unlikely that the fric-
tion coefficients would be lower than this, so variations between
these values and 0.75 were investigated. The flow patterns and
media distribution are very similar to those of the base case and
so are not shown. Fig. 23 shows the variation of power draw with
friction coefficient for two media sizes. For 15 mm media there is a
steady gradual near-linear increase in power draw with friction,
with the power draw for friction of 0.75 being around 30% higher
than for the base case. Since the interaction of the shearing media
shear zones surrounding each disc – which leads to the much more
moderate linear increase in power draw observed.
Fig. 24 shows the variation in peak collision energy with mate-
rial friction coefficient for two media sizes. For the 15 mm it
increases in a near linear manner that is very similar to that of
the variation of the power draw. For the 25 mm media, there is
an eightfold increase in the peak collision energy. This variation
is similar in form to that of the power draw but about double the
magnitude of change. The more intense collisions reflect the
increased speed of the media near the discs which create stronger
collisions within the mill.
Finally, Fig. 25 shows the percentage of energy absorbed by the
impellor and mill shell respectively for two media sizes as a
8.0
25 mm
7.0

Peak collision energy (mJ)

15 mm
is predominantly tangential with significant amounts of frictional 6.0
sliding, it is reasonable to expect a linear increase in power with
the amount of friction. Farber et al. (2011) in an experimental 5.0

study also found that the power draw increased with sliding fric- 4.0
tion of media.
In contrast, for 25 mm media there is a radical increase in 3.0

power draw, by more than 300%. With increasing friction there is 2.0
a significant increase in the traction of the media to the impellor
discs and the media speeds increase sharply, in much the same 1.0

way as was seen at the discharge end discs when a strong axial 0.0
pressure was applied (see Fig. 20). The reason for this drastic 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8
change in behaviour lies in the number of ball layers between Friction Coefficient
discs. Each disc generates a shear zone between the disc surface
and the more slowly moving charge mass beyond. The size of the Fig. 24. Variation of peak collision energy with friction coefficient for two media
sizes.
shear zone is typically between 5 and 10 particle layers thick. So
if the number of particle layers between discs is less than 10–20
then the shear zones will overlap and interact. This occurs for
25 mm media for which there are only 12 layers. When the friction 25.0
Impellor Energy Absorption (%)

is low then these layers are still able to slide over each other, but as (a)
the friction level increases the layers have less ability to slide and
bridging or locking occurs which increases the transverse bed pres- 20.0
sure. This effect has previously been reported by Jayasundara et al.
(2008) for a small laboratory scale mill and comparatively large 15.0
media. This bridging presses the particles more firmly against the
discs increasing the traction and the energy transfer to the media
25 mm
which therefore accelerate to higher speed. This leads to very large 10.0
15 mm
increases in the power draw for higher values of friction. For the
15 mm media, there are 20 layers of particles between discs and
5.0
so even for high friction there is little interaction between the 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8
Friction Coefficient

5.3 1.4
(b)
Shell Energy Absorption (%)

4.8 25 mm
1.2
15 mm
4.3
1.0
3.8 25 mm
Power (MW)

0.8
3.3 15 mm
0.6
2.8

2.3 0.4

1.8 0.2
1.3
0.0
0.8 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8
0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8
FrictionCoefficient
Friction Coefficient
Fig. 25. Variation of energy absorption of the (a) impellor and (b) shell with friction
Fig. 23. Variation of power draw with friction coefficient for two media sizes. coefficient for two media sizes.
 P.W. Cleary et al. / Minerals Engineering 79 (2015) 220–238 235

function of the friction level. For the impellor, the highest absorp-
tion occurs for the lowest value of friction. As the friction increases,
this percentage decreases quite strongly so that for friction of 0.75
the impellor absorbs only around 8% of the energy input. The
impellor absorption is also almost independent of the media size.
In contrast the behaviour of the mill shell absorption is quite differ-
ent. Firstly, the behaviour differs for the two media sizes with the
absorption doubling for 25 mm whilst remaining nearly constant
for the 15 mm media. This dependence is due to the high speed
layer of media entrained by the discs extending radially outward
to the mill shell for the 25 mm when the friction coefficient is high.
However, for the smaller media the media flow near the shell is
still relatively slow moving and so the fraction of the energy
absorption by the shell does not change with the friction level.

11.2. Coefficient of restitution

The coefficient of restitution e is a measure of the energy loss

during individual collisions. This can vary due to the present of
interstitial material (fine powder or slurry) which can cushion
the collision of media particles or due to changes in the ceramic
media itself. The power draw is almost invariant to the choice of
e at 1.31 MW (with less than a 1% variation when changing e from
0.4 to 0.8). This finding is consistent with observations by
Jayasundara et al. (2008) for a laboratory scale Isamill. The percent-
age of energy absorbed by the impellor declines slightly from 24%
for e = 0.8 to 21% for e = 0.4, whilst the percentage of energy
absorbed by the mill shell increases modestly from 0.8% to 1.0%.
The peak collision energy increases slightly from 0.59 mJ to
0.65 mJ for 25 mm media. The flow pattern and media distribution
are indistinguishable. Overall, the Isamill M10000 performance is
quite insensitive to variations of the coefficient of restitution of
the media. So regardless of the origin of any variation, it has little
impact on the predicted performance.
Fig. 26. (a) Normal stress distribution on the impellor and shell of the mill, and (b)
normal stress distribution on the face of one of the impellor discs for a fill level of
12. Stress and wear on mill
80% and a tip speed of 22 m/s with 15 mm media.

The stresses applied to the liner of the mill are of interest in

terms of the mechanical design of the mill and its wear compo-
nents. Fig. 26 shows the normal stress distribution on the impellor
and shell of the mill and on the face of one of the impellor discs for
the base case operating conditions and for 15 mm media. The shear
stress distribution is very similar to the normal stress but is three
times smaller in magnitude. The stress distribution is not sensitive
to the media size. The normal stress varies vertically with the
hydrostatic pressure gradient in the charge bed. On each disc, there
are significant variations in normal stress in relatively short dis-
tances. These variations in structural load represent a design chal-
lenge for the impellor. The stress is very high around the sides of
the disc holes closest to the outside of the disc and between the
holes and the outside of the disc (all coloured red in Fig. 26b).
These regions correspond to locations where the build up of parti-
cles within the holes press against the disc and then along the
paths of the media as they are ejected outward in the radial jets
that lead to the discharge of the media within the disc holes. The
stresses in the outer sections of the disc between the high stress
areas are moderate (green) whilst there is a complex distribution
of quite low stress (dark blue) to the side of the disc holes and
between them and the shaft.
The normal power absorption (an indicator of impact wear) on
one of the central discs is shown in Fig. 27 and the shear power (an
indicator of abrasive wear) on the entire impellor is shown in
Fig. 28. These are for the base case conditions and for a media size
of 15 mm. The impact damage (as given by the rate of energy
absorption from the normal component of contacts and shown in
Fig. 27a) is more than an order of magnitude lower than the abra-
sion damage (as given by the rate of shear energy absorption and
shown in Fig. 27b). This is entirely consistent with the flow pre-
dicted for the Isamill and indicates that the grinding action is
almost entirely dominated by abrasion. This is despite the normal
stress being three times higher and is due to the very large slip
velocity between the surface of the rapidly rotating impellor and
the adjacent media. The wear distribution is not sensitive to the
media size. The only area of the discs that is subject to strong
impact wear is the leading edge and very close by surfaces around
the leading semi-circular edge of the disc holes. This is the result of
the flow of particles within and out from the disc holes as they
form the discharge jets. There is also an elevated level of impact
damage around the edge of the disc. The impact distribution shares
structural features with the normal stress but the relative intensi-
ties of the impact wear are heavily moderated by the variation of
the relative contact velocity which also influences the energy
absorption and therefore wear of the disc. The impact wear pattern
showing wear around the edge of the holes is very similar to the
disc wear predicted by Jayasundara et al. (2011a) albeit with the
disc holes being circular in that study.
The abrasive wear distribution is quite different to that of the
impact. There is strong abrasion (coloured red) around the periph-
ery of the disc and extending inwards towards the leading edge of
the disc holes. The high wear that appears in a band between the
disc holes and the perimeter of the disc arises from the jets of
236 P.W. Cleary et al. / Minerals Engineering 79 (2015) 220–238
Fig. 27. (a) Impact, and (b) abrasion wear on the face of one of the impellor discs for
a fill level of 80% and a tip speed of 22 m/s for 15 mm media.
Fig. 28. Abrasion wear on the full impellor and classifier for a fill level of 80% and a
tip speed of 22 m/s and a 15 mm media size.
particles ejected from the holes, some of which slide over the sur-
face of the disc. The rest of the outer section of the disc face (for
radii outside the disc holes) shows a moderate level of abrasion
(coloured green). This is also consistent with the shear power dis-
tributions found for circular holes by Jayasundara et al. (2011a)
with increased wear between the hole and the disc edge. The gen-
eral agreement in the wear predictions between the laboratory
scale and full size mills suggests that the basic dynamics of the mill
are maintained across the large size range.
There is little abrasion found between the disc holes and the
shaft, except for a weak increase (coloured light blue) on the side
of the disc just around the front of each disc hole. Fig. 28 shows
that the pattern of abrasive wear on the discs is very similar for
all of the discs regardless of axial location. There is also strong
abrasive wear on the end surfaces of the classifier.
The wear distributions change in fairly obvious ways with vari-
ations in the tip speed of the impellor. For lower speeds, the abra-
sion extends a little less far radially inwards towards the disc holes.
For a higher speed the high wear extends slightly further towards
the disc holes and also extends further inwards from the outer disc
edge. When there is an axial pressure gradient then the wear is dif-
ferent on each disc with much lower wear on the first three discs
(at the feed end) and much higher wear on the last three discs
(at discharge end) with the wear on the middle pair of discs being
similar to Fig. 28.
13. Conclusions
DEM simulation has been used to study the behaviour of the
media and the collisional environment in a full industrial scale
Isamill. The mill considered is the M10000 which is the second lar-
gest available commercial Isamill. This study demonstrates that
modelling of full size stirred mills with practical media sizes and
complete representations of the mill geometry is now feasible.
The modelling has been able to provide a general understanding
of the force balances that control the mill performance and the
quantitative variation of key performance measures such as power
draw and peak collision energy with changes in mill operating
parameters and media properties.
The key factor controlling the behaviour of the media and mill
performance is the force balance on the media adjacent to the
rotating discs on the impellor. Gravity plays a critical role by pro-
viding a restoring force that pushes particles down and sideways
against the impellor discs. This hydrostatic pressure ensures that
the media bed is constantly pressed against the discs which
enables energy transfer from the discs to the adjacent media.
These particles are then rapidly accelerated in the azimuthal direc-
pffiffiffiffiffiffi
tion to an equilibrium speed of gR. So although, it is often
thought that stirred mills are controlled solely by the centrifugal
acceleration generated by the high rotation rates, gravity still plays
a critical role in controlling the performance and the magnitude of
gravity still limits the performance of the mill.
The flow structure in the Isamill is quite complex and involves
three major regions:
1. There is a relatively slowly moving region of particles outside
the radius of the impellor discs which flow around the inside
of the mill shell.
2. The holes in the discs play a critical role in media transport. As
they pass through the packed bed in the lower half of the mill
they fill up due to the higher bed pressure pushing particles into
the holes. Once they rise above the horizontal plane through the
mill axis they enter a region that is less densely packed which
allows these particles to then be thrown radially outwards by
the centrifugal force resulting from the disc rotational motion.
This generates strong high speed jets of particles that move axi-
ally and radially away from each side of the disc.
3. There is a strong circulatory shearing motion between the discs.
These particles move at reasonably high speed driven by the
shear forces from the flat sides of these discs.
 P.W. Cleary et al. / Minerals Engineering 79 (2015) 220–238
The power draw for the Isamill for base case operating
conditions and 9 mm media is 1.1 MW. Of the energy input by
the impellor, 64% is dissipated in media–media collisions with
36% dissipated in media–boundary collisions. Of this boundary
dissipation only 2.2% is dissipated in the normal direction whilst
a dominant 34.0% is dissipated in the shear direction. The energy
dissipation split between the impellor and mill shell is 35% and
1% respectively. This means that the wear rate on the impellor is
dominated by abrasion and is 35 times higher than the wear on
the mill shell.
The normal energy dissipation is large in the annular region
between the outer edges of the grinding discs and the shell which
corresponds to where the bed is most densely packed (due to the
centrifugal force) and where the circumferential shear causes col-
lisions between adjacent layers of media. In contrast, the shear
energy dissipation is maximal in a small region around the outside
of each disc and extending radially inwards towards the disc holes.
There is also reasonably strong shear dissipation in the region
between the shell and the outside of the discs produced by the cir-
cumferential shear flow generated by the rotation of the impellor.
An important observation is that there is very little shear energy
dissipation in the spaces between the discs. This occurs because
the discs tend to cause the media in between to rotate with the
impellor almost as a rigid body albeit at a much slower rotation
speed due to the large amount of slip. The media–media interac-
tions are the dominant collision type in the Isamill. The most com-
mon collision energy is 5 lJ with a collision rate of 20 million
collisions/s.
The stresses applied to the liner of the mill are of interest in
terms of the mechanical design of the mill and its wear compo-
nents. The shear stress distribution is very similar to the normal
stress but is three times smaller in magnitude. It is not sensitive
to the media size. The impact damage is more than an order of
magnitude lower than the abrasion damage. This is entirely consis-
tent with the flow predicted and indicates that grinding is domi-
nated by abrasion. The wear distribution is also not sensitive to
the media size. The impact and abrasive wear distributions are
quite different. There is strong abrasion around the periphery of
the discs and extending inwards towards the leading edge of the
disc holes. The high wear that appears in a band between the disc
holes and the perimeter of the disc arises from the jets of particles
ejected from the holes, some of which slide over the surface of the
disc. The rest of the outer section of the disc face shows a moderate
level of abrasion.
Changes in the mill performance were studied for variations in
all the key operating parameters and the collision properties of the
media:
1. Media size of 15 mm and below produced very similar flow pat-
terns but the power draw was found to decrease with media
size. For very large media (25 mm) the flow behaviour was
moderately different.
2. The fill level has a strong, non-linear effect on the mill perfor-
mance within the operating range of 70–90% of the grinding
chamber. The power draw increases sharply (faster than linear)
with fill level. The functional behaviour of power draw with fill
level is very similar for different media sizes. The collision ener-
gies also increase strongly with fill level which reflects the
much stronger frictional engagement with the discs, the faster
media speeds and the much larger fraction of the mill charge
which is strongly agitated.
3. Little change was observed in either the flow and charge struc-
ture with increasing tip speed above the base case speed of
22 m/s, but quite strong changes occur for lower speeds as
the impellor is progressively less able to maintain the agitated
237
of the charge. The power draw varies linearly with tip speed
(rotation rate) and this dependence is independent of media
size.
4. An axial pressure gradient is usually present when either
pumping slurry or forcing air axially through the mill. This con-
tributes to the restoring force that presses media against the
grinding discs. Consequently, all aspects of mill performance
and the media flow patterns are strongly influenced by the
presence of such axial gradients. The media is forced towards
the discharge end and the pressure of media against the discs
and the resulting traction and shear flow induced in the media
increases strongly along the mill. The power draw and collision
energies rise sharply as a result.
5. The flow behaviour and mill performance is independent of the
coefficient of restitution of the media.
6. For 15 mm and smaller media the power draw and collision
energies increase linearly with the friction coefficient and the
flow patterns are qualitatively similar. For 25 mm media, bridg-
ing occurs between discs with particle jamming leading to very
substantial increases in the speed of the media and in the power
draw.
The variations identified have been found to be consistent with
previous findings using DEM modelling on laboratory scale mills
and in experimental measurement of the Isamill.
Using excessively over-sized media in DEM simulation or labo-
ratory scale experiments can produce flow patterns that are not
fully representative of the flow patterns in the full scale equipment
and with more realistic media sizes. In particular, 25 mm media
were found to be too large for this mill with mechanical bridging
between discs causing significantly greater lifting capacity for the
discs resulting in much more media being agitated at relatively
higher speeds leading to stronger collisions and higher power draw.
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