Modelling solid particles motion inside a rotating drum with lifters
 

Hello,
I am trying to simulate the motion of solid particles (glass beads with d = 0.7 mm density 1500 kg/m3) inside a rotating drum with lifters.
The solid particles should be presented initially as a bed at the bottom of the drum with volume occupation of 15% from the drum. And then by the rotation of the drum the lifters are used to lift the material and distribute them through curtains down to the bottom bed interacting with the air.
I have already made the model and mesh with two domains (air domain without lifters and drum domain with lifters) please see attached figure (1) and (2).

I have used fluent as the solver because from my point of view CFX cannot support such works. However I found many issues when trying fluent, hope you can give suggestions:

1- Which multiphase model is the best (enable defining the particle diameters and density). Up to my knowledge, I found the suitable model can be used is Eular-multi fluid VOF (that suitable for granular but considers the solid particles as a secondary fluid? I don’t know is this physically right? And if I used the DPM with Eular, the particle diameter is not introduced?
2- The drum rotation motion?
3- Should the air domain defined with rotation like the drum? Or as logic says and it should be stationary and affected by the drum and lifters rotation?
4- The main issue is how to define the initial bed volume 15%? I tried to make patch after mark a specified volume but it failed?

Just try a DEM (discrete elements) approach. There should be a suitable program in the Ansys-World. Just forgot the name.

thank you for your reply. Actually my target is to compare both fluent simulation results with other DEM software like Lighhhhhts.

So you should ask in the Fluent-Sub-Forum instead of here.