UALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE SCREW LINER WEAR PREDICTION IN VERTICAL STIRRED MILLS BY THE DISCRETE ELEMENT METHOD

摘要

Vertical stirred mills have been widely used in the regrinding process in mining operations for its efficiency over other conventional mills. Screw liner wear prediction in these regrinding operations is important for plant maintenance planning and for operational costs estimation. In this paper, a Metso Vertimill VTM-1500, located in an iron ore operation in Brazil, had its screws liners worn compared to the simulated screw liner worn by Discrete Element Method (DEM). The net power for different lifetime screw liner worn was estimated to understand the effect of the screw liner wear on the grinding efficiency. The results show that the simulated screw liner wear profile is similar to the industrial screw liner wear and this qualitative analysis can be used to help the maintenance planning team to forecast the liners lifetime.