Flowability of Binary Mixtures: Effect of Fines Concentration

At last year's conference our group presented work (Jacob and Vasquez, 2009, "The Role of Fines in Controlling the Flow of Bulk Solids", AIChE Conference, Session 56, Talk a) demonstrating that, contrary to common knowledge, the coarse fraction of a bulk solid does impact its flowability. Since that presentation further studies have been conducted scrutinizing these effects. Specifically, using a Schulze ring shear tester, key parameters such as unconfined yield strength, angle of internal friction, and effective angle of internal friction as function of consolidation stress were determined for narrow size distributions of coarse and fine materials. Experimental data and analysis will be presented.