The paper discusses the designing process of screw conveyors, with regard to the determination of the exploitation parameters of such devices with the use of the Discrete Element Method (DEM). The influence of the chosen model input parameters on the results of the simulations was examined. The key parameters which determine the exploitation characteristics of a screw conveyor were identified as follows: the size of a DEM particle, coefficients of internal and external friction. Experimental measurements of the laboratory screw conveyor provided the actual exploitation characteristics of a device used for the transportation of a limestone powder. The comparison of the results of the simulations and experiments gave satisfactory results. For this reason, DEM simulations were identified as an effective tool for determining and optimization of the construction and exploitation parameters of the screw conveyors

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The paper describes the problem of designing screw conveyors in terms of determining their exploitation characteristics. Based on the actual values of mass efficiency and power demand obtained in a laboratory experiment, the theoretical design methods and the numerical discrete element method model results were verified. The obtained results have shown that the currently used theoretical methods underestimate the mass efficiency and power demand compared to experiments when typical values of filling rate coefficient and progress resistance coefficient are used. It was also shown that the results of DEM simulations are in good agreement with the experiments in terms of mass efficiency and power demand. Based on the exploitation characteristics determined in DEM simulations for different constructions of the screw and different rotational speeds, multi-objective optimization of the exploitation parameters of the screw was performed in order to minimize the power demand of a screw conveyor and simultaneously maximize its mass efficiency. The optimization results showed that it is possible to find such construction and the rotational speed that will maximize the mass efficiency of the conveyor and keep the power demand low, reducing the exploitation costs of the device.

The article presents the problems of determining the mass efficiency of a rotary feeder depending on the selection of design parameters of the device, such as outer diameter, number of blades and rotational speed of the rotor. The hitherto theoretical methods of calculating the feeder efficiency were presented, as well as a new method of determining the device operation parameters was proposed. For this purpose, the numerical Discrete Element Method was used, which allowed simulating the transport of limestone powder in a cell feeder with various design variants. The results of the tests showed that the above design parameters affect the instantaneous efficiency of the feeder and thus impact the distribution of the dosed material during the operation of the device. Depending on the design solution, the simulation results gave information on the fill factor of the feeders. The study showed a significant potential of DEM simulation in the design of circular feeders intended for dosing bulk materials.