The Effect of Rotor Tip Speed of a Vertical Shaft Impactor on the Collision Energy Spectrum

Conference poster, 2015

The increasing restrictions on natural aggregates have led to a demand for effective production of artificial sand and gravel. VSI crushers are established comminution machines often used in order to improve the sphericity of particles. Due to the difficulty in data collection, the full extent of the particle dynamics inside a VSI crusher has remained unexplored. The aim of this paper is to use DEM simulations to model a full-scale crusher, generate a realistic material flow and make a number of crusher tests with different rotor tip speeds. Each particle’s collision energy compared to its size will provide a spectrum which can be related to the probability of breakage. This will show how increasing rotational speed affects collisions and the impact energy of particles inside the crusher. The result is an increased understanding that can allow optimization and modeling of VSI crushers with higher accuracy.