2009 Volume 49 Issue 5 Pages 693-702
The motions of the particles and the gas in the actual scale sintering bed were simulated to elucidate the mechanism of the bed structure changes, the bed shrink and the local void formations by the simultaneous calculation of Navier–Stokes equations and the Lagrangian DEM equations based on the simple sintering model in which the phase change of particles and the cohesion forces due to the liquid bridges among particles were considered.
The bed shrink rate decreased with the moving downward of the melting zone. This is mainly because the weight of the particle bed increases with increasing the bed height. The gap of the particle motions occurred between the zones of which the content and the contact number were largely different. The gap separates contact particles and the crack appears. The shrinks of the beds with the large particles (MEBIOS particle) were smaller than that of the bed without the large particles. The reasons are that the large particles do not change the particle volume and also the high void region around the large particles is formed. The crack did not occur in the particle bed placing the large particles. The large scale zones of which the content and the contact number are largely different are cut off by the large particles and the small crack originated from the separation of contact points between iron ore particles does not grow by the existence of the large particles. After the sintering the high number density areas on the large particles and the void areas under the large particles were formed. This is because the large particles with smaller particle density relatively ascend among the small particles with the larger particle density. The void areas under the large particles advance the aggregation among the small particles which do not contact with the large particles.
