Abstract:With the aim to research the pellets discharge characteristics of flutewheel feeding machine, the Hertz-Mindlin no slip contact model was used to analyze the contact force and damping force between interacting particles, and then the translational motion and rolling motion equations for pellet feed were established. By using discrete element method, particles velocity distribution, law of particles motion and the distance from a single particle to central axis of flutewheel were simulated, and the effects of flutewheel speed on particles velocity distribution and thickness of drive layer were analyzed. Discharge characteristic experiments of four flutewheel feeding machine were done by using Linyi Yongao 700 and Yongao 997 pellets. According to the experimental results, conclusions were drawn that the filling coefficient of flutewheel was decreased with the increase of rotation speed, and the flutewheel speed had a significant impact on filling coefficient. Meanwhile, the fixed proportion and fixed weight feeding experiment of four flutewheel feeding machine was carried out, the testing result showed that the maximum measurement error of feeding was 1.13%, the minimum error was 0.56%, the average error was 0.83%, and the blend quality of pellet was good. In conclusion, four flutewheel feeding machine can meet the precise feeding, and also it can meet the automatic mixing of a variety of fine pellets. Compared with the screw conveyor feeding machine, the flutewheel feeding machine has advantages in simple mechanical structure, synchronous metering discharge, effective particles impingment mixing and high speed discharge.