Digital simulation of rock grinding process in ball mill

Modelling of grinding load motion is important for determining the dynamic parameters of grinding bodies in grinding chambers, which directly affects the determination of energy consumption of rock destruction in mills of various types. The aim of the work is to create a digital physical model of the grinding load of a drum mill, taking into account the physical properties of the grinding rock with the possibility of optimising the grinding process using artificial intelligence. For physical simulation of the grinding load of the drum mill by the finite element method, the LS Dyna programme from the Ansys package was used. The finite element mesh was built in Altair Hypermesh, LS Prepost software was used to create the model and visualise the results of calculations, and ParaView was used for post-processing of the results. In the work the processes of rock pieces destruction at impact and abrasive impact of grinding bodies on the crushed material with consideration of physical properties of rock were investigated. As a result of combining several models of grinding load motion at different operating modes of the mill, a generalised model of the process of rock destruction was obtained, which takes into account physical properties of the material being ground, sizes of balls and pieces of rock, as well as the influence of fine fractions on the grinding process. It has been established that the criterion for optimising the mill design and operating parameters can be the rock grinding speed. The dynamic portraits of grinding load obtained in the study allow to optimise the grinding process by the criterion of energy consumption.