CHINESEJOURNALOFMECHANICALENGINEERING

Vol.24,aNo. 4,a2011
DOI:10.3901/CJME.2011.04.***,availableonlineatwww.cjmenet.comwww.cjmenet.com.cn

NewMethodtoMeasuretheFillLeveloftheBallMillII AnalysisoftheVibrationSignals
HUANGPeng*,JIAMinping andZHONGBinglin
SchoolofMechanicalEngineering,SoutheastUniversity,Nanjing211189,China
Received March3,2010revised May9,2011 accepted May 13,2011published electronically May 18,2011

Abstract: Theexactmeasurement ofthefilllevelisthekeyandbasicproblemforautomaticcontrolandoptimizedoperationofthecoal pulverizing system. Because the ball mill pulverizing system is nonlinearity, long time delay and timevarying, the reliable and effectivemethodformeasuringthefilllevelwaslackedatpresent. Inordertoreducetheinfluencebyvariousfactorsonmeasuringthe fill level and improve the precision of the fill level measurement, a novel characteristic variable is proposed. A set of wireless transmissiondevicewasdesignedtorecordvibrationsignals,andanaccelerometerwithhighaccuracyandlargemeasuringrangewas mounteddirectlyonthemillshelltopickupthevibrationsignalsfromthemillshell.Aseriesofdataacquisitionexperimentsunder variousballloadandwatercontentof coalconditionswereconductedinanindustrialmilltoinvestigate therelationship between thefill level and the angular position of the maximum vibration point of the mill shell through the analysis of the vibration signals. The analyticalresultoftestdataclearlyshowthattheangularpositionofthemaximumvibrationpointonthemillshelldecreasesasthefill levelincreases.Atthesametime,comparingwiththetraditionalcharacteristicvariable,thefeaturevariableofthefilllevelproposedin thispaperisnotsubjecttotheeffectoftheballloadandwatercontentofcoal,whichprovidesanewsolutionandreliablebasisforthe accuratemeasurementof thefilllevel.. Keywords: ballmill, filllevel, vibrationsignal, signalprocessing

1 Introduction

As the rotating of the mill, the steel balls and coal particlesintheballmillarebroughttoacertainheightby thecentrifugalforceofthemillandthefriction,andthen fallalong aparabolictrajectoryundertheeffectofgravity. In the course of falling, the part of impact energy of the steel balls is absorbed bythe coal particles to realize the grinding and comminuting of the coal. Another part of impactenergyisdeliveredtothemillshellandcausesthe vibration of the shell, this part of the impact energy is further transmitted to the front and rear bearing housings causingvibration.The higherthecoalloadinthemill,the moreimpact energy of steel ballsis absorbed bythecoal powder, and the lower impact energy reaches the mill shell and bearing housings to cause relatively small vibration,andviceversa.Sothevibration strengthofthe mill shell and the bearing housings to some extent can reflect the fill level information. Because the
* Correspondingauthor.Email:feihonghp@163.com This project is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.51005047,51075070),ProductionandResearchJoint InnovationFundofJiangsuProvince(GrantNo.BY2009152),andNew DoctorTeacherFoundationofSoutheastUniversityofChina(GrantNo. 9202000024)

accelerometercanbemountedeasilyonthefrontandrear bearinghousing,thetraditionalvibrationmethods can be used to measure the fill level based on the vibration signals of the bearing housings. At present among these methods, some characteristic values of the fill level, such [12] [36] [78] as amplitude , energy , power and root mean [910] square (RMS) of vibration signals , were extracted from the vibration signal of the bearing housings to monitorthefilllevel. However, besides the impact of steel balls, there are manyreasons and vibration sources,suchas transmission system vibration, foundation vibration, vibration caused bythemomentofasymmetryandinstallationerror,which can also cause the vibration of bearing housings. These vibrationsourceswillaffectthecharacteristicsofthetime and frequency domain of the vibration signals of the bearing housings. Furthermore, vibration transmission pathhasalsoinfluenceonthevibrationsignalsofbearing housings.Sothevibrationsignalsofthebearinghousings cannot accurately reflect the collision condition of the steelballsandthefilllevelinformationinthemill.Dueto the difficulties in accelerometer installation and vibration data transmission, in addition to the high cost of the vibration data acquisition system, to date there has been little work on measuring the fill level by processing the vibrationsignalsofthemillshellbuttheworkofGUGEL,

YHUANGPeng,etal:NewMethodtoMeasuretheFillLeveloftheBallMill:PartIIAnalysisoftheVibrationSignals
mountedonthissupportingplatebysixscrews,see Fig. 2.
Frontshaft Wireless transmitter Inlet Accelerometer Tubularballmill Outlet Rearshaft

[1112] et al , is noteworthy. In their work, two vibration sensors, 180 degrees apart, were used to collect signal information from the mill shell, so that the instantaneous readings can be averaged. The averaged data were then fed into a dynamic neural network and a fill level measurementfrom0% to100% percentwasoutput. Inthisresearch,aseriesofexperimentswere carriedout atanindustrialballmillincoalfiredpowerplant,andthe vibration signals were collected directly from the mill shell.Themainpurposeofthispaperistoinvestigatethe correlation between the angular position of maximum vibration point on the mill shell and the fill level by analyzing and processing the vibration signals from the millshell.

Fig.1.Schematicdiagramof thefixedpositionof the sensorand the wirelesstransmissiondevice

2 Experiment
2.1 Experimental introduction In the experiments, a 3.5 mdiameter by 6.0 mlong industrial tubular ball mill driven by a threephase motor (YTM6306,1000kW, 985r/min) was operated at 17.57 r/min(77%ofcriticalspeed).Inthemill,thechargeofthe steel balls was made up of three different diameter balls: 40,50and60mmcorrespondingto40%,40%,20%mass ratio,respectively. Comparedwiththebearinghousings,theinstallationof sensor, acquisition and transmission of vibration signals from the mill shell are more difficult. The vibration data acquisition system comprises two major components: a highresolutionaccelerometersandawirelesstransmission devicemounteddirectlytothemillshell.Fig.1showsthe layoutofthesenorandthe wirelesstransmissiondeviceon the mill shell. Since the vibration amplitude of the mill shellisfargreaterthanthatofbearinghousingsofthemill, an accelerometer (PCB Piezotronics Inc., USA) with a large measurement range was chosen. The amplitude range and the sensitivity of the accelerometer are in the 2 2 rangeof981m/s and5.10mV/(m/s ),respectively.This sensor was located in the middle of the mill shell, as shown in Fig.1.Asmall metal plate was first welded on the mill shell. Then the sensor was screwed on the metal plate.Thesensorinstalledonthemillshellrotateswiththe mill, which is not the same as the traditional vibration method where the sensor can be directly connected with the data acquisition computer by the cable. In order to realize the wireless transmission of the vibration data, a set of wireless transmitter device was designed, and this device cantransmitthe vibration signals of the mill shell to the data acquisition computer wirelessly. Some sampling commands, such as sampling frequency, sampling point and sampling angular position, were sent tothewirelesstransmissiondevicebythedataacquisition software, to collect the vibration data. The method of fixingthe wireless transmitter was similarity with that of thesensor.Firstly,ametalsupportingplatewasweldedon the mill shell.Then the wireless transmission device was

Fig.2.Installationimage of thewirelesstransmission devicemountedonthemillshell

As the sensor rotates with the rotation of themill, the collectingregionofthesensoronthemillshellneededto be determined. Due toa closerelationshipexistingin the vibrationofthemillshelland the filllevel,inthisresearch the impact region of the outmost layer steel balls on the millshellwaschosenastheregionofdataacquisition.In Refs. [13], the charge motion of the mill has been simulated by the DEM, and the impact region of the outmostlayersteelballscanbeshownin Fig.3.Inorder toreducetheacquisitiongroupandacquisitiontimeofthe vibration signals, the region of data acquisition was in range of 310-340 on the mill shell,as shown in Fig.3. Inotherwords,onlywhenthesensorrotatesinthisregion, it keepsworking condition.
180

90 270 30 20

Regionof signalacquisition

Fig.3. Regionof thedataacquisitiononthemillshell

2.2 Experimental conditions In the power plant, three experiments were conducted,

CHINESEJOURNALOFMECHANICALENGINEERING
with seven fill level conditions, i.e., 0%, 5%, 10%, , 35%. Althoughthe filllevelconditionsweresameinevery experiment,thesteelballloadandthe watercontentinthe coal were different during these experiments, which can beseenfromTable1.Inthefollowing,the10%filllevel condition in the first experiment as an example was illustrated to introduce the process of experimental operation.
Table1.Ballloadandwatercontent inthe coalforthree tests
Testconditions Ballload M/t Watercontent of coalw/% The1sttest 32 6.30 The2nd test 38 8.64 The3rd test 44 7.71

(1) Under the working condition of the mill, the coal feederwasclosed,andduringthisoperationonlythecoal powderwasoutputfromtheoutletandnocoalwasinput from the inlet by the coal feeder. This process lasted 10 min,andthentherewasnocoalload(0%filllevel)inthe mill. (2) After the above step, the coal feeder was restarted andtheoutletof the millwasclosed.Duringthisoperation, thecoalwasinputfromtheinletbythecoalfeederandno coal powder was output from the outlet. The coal feeder wasnotcloseduntilthecoalloadof10%filllevel(about 4tons)wasinput,andthenthevibrationsignalsofthemill shellwerecollected.Instep(2),theoutletofthemillwas always closed, and the mill was maintained its normal rotationstate. 2.3 Collectionofthevibrationsignals Because the impact response range caused by the impact of steel balls is relatively large, the sampling frequencyneedsto beanappropriatevaluetofullycapture the original vibration information. In this research the sampling frequency was set at 40 kHz after conducting several experiments at different sampling frequency, and thesamplingpointwassetat4 096points. Whena vibration datais collected, the sensor can pass an arc length of 10 with the rotation of the mill, and dependent on the speed of the mill, sampling frequency and sampling point. In other words, this vibration signal containsvibrationinformationof10arclengthof the mill shell.Inordertoobtainthevibrationinformationfromthe dataacquisitionregion(between310and340onthemill shell),thesensorneedstoworkatangularpositionof 310, 320 and 330 on the mill shell, respectively. The data acquisitionwasgovernedbytheVisualC++programming environment. The process of collecting data for 10% fill level condition in the first experiment is illustrated to introduce the processof experimentaloperation. (1) The work of collecting vibration data started after the coal load of 10% level was inputthemill by the coal feeder. In the data acquisition software, the sampling

angular position was set at 310, and this command was sent to the wireless transmission device. The sensor did not start to work until it moved at the angular position 310 on the mill shell. The vibration signals at angular position310 were thencollected. (2) With the similar method, the sensor can collect vibration data at angular position 310 and 320, respectively.Ateachangularposition,thirtyvibrationdata werecollected. Fig. 4a shows a typical time domain waveform of the mill shell vibration,andthe corresponding FFT spectrum is presented in Fig. 4b. From the amplitude of the vibration signal shownin Fig.4, it is obviously seen that thevibrationofthemillshellisverylarge.Moreover,the mainenergyofthevibrationsignalfocusonthe frequency band in therange of 1kHz-10kHz, which is can be seen fromtheFFTspectrum.Thisfrequencybandshouldbe the main range of impact frequency response caused by the impact of steel balls, and can reflect the fill level information.
1500
2 Amplitude W /(m.s )

1000 500 0 500 1000 1500 0 20 40 60 Time t/ms 80 100

(a) Timedomainwaveform
30 Amplitude W /(m.s )
2

25 20 15 10 5 0 0 5 10 Frequency f/kHz 15 20

(b) FFTwaveform Fig.4. TypicaltimedomainandFFTwaveform of thevibrationsignalofthemillshell

3 Digitalsignalprocessingtechnique
3.1 Designofdigitalbandpassfilter Since the range of the impact frequency response was

YHUANGPeng,etal:NewMethodtoMeasuretheFillLeveloftheBallMill:PartIIAnalysisoftheVibrationSignals
From the introduction of Section 2.3, it is known that thirty vibration signalsattheangularposition310, 320 and 330 were collected by the sensor, respectively. The discretevibrationvaluesoftheith vibrationsignalinthe timedomain that were collected at angular position 310 canbedenotedas
i s = x n i=1, 2, , 30 n=1, 2, , 4 096,

2 Amplitude W /(m.s )

obtained in the previous content, a bandpass filter is needed to extract the impact information of the vibration signal and eliminate the effect of other factors on the vibration signal. Atype I Chebyshev digital filter that is equirippleinthepassbandandmonotonicinthestopband was designedin thisresearch.The prototype of this filter is type I Chebyshev analog prototype filter. Because the theory of this type analog prototype filter has been [1415] adequately discussed and given elsewhere , the principleofthistypefilteris not introduced here. The type I Chebyshev digital bandpass filter can be obtained by applying the variable substitution method to [1516] the type IChebyshevdigitallowpassfilter .Basedon thecharacteristicof the vibrationsignalfrom themill shell, themagnitudeandphraseresponsesofdesignedfilterare showninFig. 5.
0 Magnitude P/dB 200 400 600 0

(1)

1000

500

500

1000 0

20

40 60 Time t/ms

80

100

10 15 Frequency f/kHz

20

(a) Timedomainwaveform
35

30
Phase /( ) 500 1000 1500 0
2 Amplitude W /(m.s )

25 20 15 10 5 0 0 5 10 Frequency f/kHz 15 20

10 15 Frequency f/kHz

20

Fig.5.MagnitudeandphraseresponsesoftypeI Chebyshev digitalbandpassfilter

(b)FFT waveform

ThefilteredtimedomainwaveformispresentedinFig. 6a,andthecorrespondingfrequencydomainwaveformis showninFig.6b.Itisclearthatthevibrationinformation in the range of 1 kHz-10 kHz is retained and other informationis removed,asshowninFig.6b. 3.2 Calculation of the position of the maximum vibrationpointonthemillshell In this research, the maximum vibration point on the mill shell is obtained by compared the RMS value of all angular positions in the data acquisition region (between 310 and 340). Three hundred angular positions, i.e., 310.0, 310.1, 310.2, , 339.9, were acquired in the data acquisition region. The RMS value of each angular positioncanbecalculatedfromthetimeseriesdata.Inthe next content, the vibration signals collected at the 10% levelcaseinthefirstexperimentareanalyzedtointroduce thecalculationmethodoftheRMSvalueofeachangular positionandthemaximumvibrationpointofthemillshell.

Fig.6.Timeand frequencydomainwaveformsobtained afterfilteringtheoriginalmillshellvibrationsignal withtypeI Chebyshevdigitalbandpassfilter

where 4 096 is the number of the sampling point. The discretevibrationvaluesinthetimedomainafterfiltering this vibration data by the type I Chebyshev digital bandpassfiltercanberepresentedas
i p = y n i=1, 2, , 30 n=1, 2, , 4 096.

(2)

whentheithdatawascollected,supposemisthenumber collected by the sensor at the discrete vibration points from the angular position 310.0 to 310.1. And these discrete vibration values in the time domain are i i i represented as x 1 , x 2 , , x m , respectively. After filtering this vibration data, the corresponding discrete i i i vibration values are y 1 , y 2 , , y m, respectively. The

CHINESEJOURNALOFMECHANICALENGINEERING
RMSvalueofangularposition310.0forthe i thvibration signalis thencalculatedfrom
1 i 2 (y n) . m n=1
m
600 RMSamplitudeY /(m.s ) RMS
2

550

i Y RMS =

(3)

500

450

Similarly, the RMS value of the angular positions 310.1, 310.2, 310.3, , 319.9 can be obtained, and thevibrationsignalsobtainedattheangularposition320 and330canbeanalyzedbythesameprinciple.TheRMS valuesoftheangularpositions320.0,320.1,320.2, , 339.9arecalculated.Theangularpositioncorresponding to the largest RMS value among three hundred RMS values is the maximum vibration point of the mill shell. Fig.7showsaplotofthevariationintheRMSamplitude of the vibration with the angular position. As is evident, the RMS amplitude increases with the increase in the angular position and reaches a maximum value correspondingtoa characteristic angularposition(326.6), and subsequently decreases with further increase in the angularposition. Theangle326.6therefore representsthe angular position of the maximum vibration point of the mill shell, which is expressed by the symbol in this research.
FilllevelL/% Angular The1st position /() test Standard deviation S Angular The2nd position /() test Standard deviation S Angular The3rd position /() test Standard deviation S 0 329.7 1.527 5 329.5 1.306 5 329.1 1.153 3 5 328.0 0.956 6 327.9 1.126 8 327.4 1.605 8 10

400

350 310

315

320 325 330 Angularposition /()

335

340

Fig.7. VariationintheRMSamplitudeof thevibrationsignal ofthemillshellwith the angularposition

4 Resultsanddiscussion
4.1 Relation between the fill level and the maximum

vibrationpoint The mean values of the angular position of the maximum vibrationpoint at eachlevel case are shownin Table 2,aswellasthestandarddeviation.

Table2. Angularpositionsofthemaximumvibrationpoint andstandarddeviation fordifferentfilllevelcasesinthree tests

15 325.7 1.283 6 325.1 1.269 6 325.9 1.493 0 20 323.9 1.154 8 324.0 0.987 5 323.5 1.252 3 25 320.9 1.933 9 321.3 1.658 2 321.9 1.411 4 30 319.1 1.055 2 318.7 1.169 0 319.5 1.469 0

326.3 1.380 5 326.7 1.667 1 326.6 1.715 0

Fig.8showsthevariationinthemeanangularposition ofthemaximumvibrationpointonthemillshellwiththe filllevelatvariousexperiments.Inalltheexperimentsitis foundthattheangularpositionofthemaximumvibration pointdecreasesasthefilllevelincreases.Thisconclusion has a good agreement with the results of the theoretical calculation andtheDEM simulation in Refs. [13]. At the sametime,thisshowsthatindespiteofdifferentballload andwatercontentinthecoalindifferentexperiments,itis noticeablethatthemaximumvibrationpointsvaryslightly for the same fill level in different experiments. However this conclusion is not suited to the traditional vibration characteristicvariablesof the filllevelsuchasRMSvalue. The ball load and the water content in the coal greatly affectonthesevariables.Table3showstheaverageRMS values of the vibration signal of the mill shell for all fill level cases in different experiments, as well as the standarddeviation.

330 328 Angularposition/() 326 324 322 320 318 0 The1sttest The2ndtest The3rdtest

10

15 20 Filllevel L/%

25

30

Fig.8.Variationinthe angularpositionofthe maximum vibration pointonthemillshellwiththefilllevelatvarious tests

YHUANGPeng,etal:NewMethodtoMeasuretheFillLeveloftheBallMill:PartIIAnalysisoftheVibrationSignals
Table3. RMSvaluesofthevibrationsignalsofthemillshellfordifferent filllevelcasesinthree tests
0 523.42 24.33 570.11 21.43 627.82 26.32 5 470.35 16.79 502.22 19.40 576.37 15.38 10 445.46 12.85 470.18 12.98 547.49 16.14 15 426.35 13.58 447.32 14.37 526.44 11.59 20 398.86 11.08 403.69 12.85 501.13 14.53 25 380.35 10.23 372.52 7.32 477.76 11.87 30 367.57 9.90 354.38 8.25 451.42 7.91

FilllevelL/% RMS value 2 The1st YRMS/ (m/s ) test Standard deviation S RMS value 2 The2nd YRMS/ (m/s ) test Standard deviation S RMS value 2 The3rd YRMS/ (m/s ) test Standard deviation S

Fig.9showsthevariationinthe averageRMSvaluesof the mill shell vibration with the fill level at various experiments.Inmostcases,atthesamefillleveltheRMS valuesofvibrationsignalislargerathigherballloadthan alowerballload, asshowninTable3andFig.9.However, the influence on the mill shell vibration caused by the water content in the coal can not be ignored. The coal powder as a damping medium in the mill significantly reduces the noise and impact forces generated by the impact of the steel balls. When the water content in the coalishigher,thedampingratioofcoalishigherthecoal powder canabsorb moreimpact energy ofthesteel balls, and the vibration of the mill shell will decrease. So the effect of the water content in the coal will become gradually apparent with the increase of the fill level. In Fig.9andTable3,at25%and30%levelcases,duetothe effectofhigherwatercontentinthecoal,theRMSvalues in thesecond test is smaller, despite havingahigher ball loadthanthatinthefirsttestatthesamefilllevel.

650 RMSamplitudeY /(m.s ) RMS

2

600 550 500 450 400 350 0

The1sttest The2ndtest The3rdtest

10

15 20 Filllevel L/%

25

30

Fig.9.VariationintheRMSamplitudeof thevibrationsignal ofthemillshellwithfilllevelatvarioustests

Inthisresearch,the comparisonbetweentheRMSvalue and the angular position of maximum vibration point is carried out by using ttest method. Table 4 shows the t values,whicharecalculatedfromtheresultsinTable2and Table3.

Table4. Hypothesistestingforthedifferencein different testsbyusing ttest

FilllevelL/% The 1stvs the 2nd Angularposition t value RMS The 2nd vs the 3rd Angularposition t value RMS The 3rd vs the 1st Angularposition t value RMS 0 0.5450 7.8875 1.2572 9.3145 1.7170 15.9539 5 0.3701 6.8051 1.3960 16.4054 1.7582 25.5022 10

1.0122 7.4138
0.2229 20.4468 0.7464 27.0915

15 1.8203 5.8101 2.2358 23.4798 0.5564 30.7145

20

25

0.3605 1.5590
1.7172 27.5146 1.2861 30.6487

0.8600
3.4096

1.5092 41.3334 2.2877

34.0434

30 1.3912 5.6069 2.3340 46.5072 1.2113 36.2516

Givena5%confidencelevel,andtakenintoaccountof the number of samples, the accept domain of hypothesis testingisasfollows: |t|2.0017. (4)

It is obvious that the t values obtained by the RMS values are not quite in the accept domain, as shown in

Table 4,and a significantdifference exists in the average RMS value of different experiments. In contrast, the t values obtained by the angular position of maximum vibration point are almost in the accept domain, and no significant difference exists in the average angular position of maximum vibration point. This conclusion shows that the angular position of maximum vibration pointasacharacteristicvalueofthefilllevelissuperiorto

CHINESEJOURNALOFMECHANICALENGINEERING
the traditional vibration feature values and can overcome the effects of the ball load and the water content in the coal. 4.2 Comparison between experimental results and conclusions of the theoretical analysis and DEM simulation Fig. 10 shows the comparison between the results of experiment in this paper and the conclusion of the theoreticalanalysisandDEMsimulationinRefs.[13].In Fig.10theexperimentaldataaretheaveragevalueofthe three experiments, and the results of the theoretical calculationand the DEM simulation can be seenTable 1, Table4andFig.11inRefs.[13]. A goodagreementcanbe observed between the conclusions of the experiment and Refs. [13],as shown in Fig. 10. This comparison reveals thattherelationshipbetween thefilllevelandtheangular positionofthemaximumvibrationpointonthemillshell proposed in this research is validated. This relationship can provide a novel method and idea for the vibration methodtomeasure the filllevel.
338 336 Angularposition/() 334 332 330 328 326 324 0 5 Filllevel L /% 10 15 Theoreticalvalue DEMsimulatiom Experiment

in the DEM simulation the coal particles are modeled as the sphere, and the collision between the steel balls and the coal is simulated as the balltoball collision, which hasagreaterdifferencewiththeactualcollisioncondition in the mill. But the result of the DEM simulation has a relatively better match with that of the experiment than that of thetheoretical calculation. Hence, this conclusion clearlydemonstratestheabilityoftheDEMtopredictthe millloadbehaviourandpowerdraw,whichbringsittothe fore as a favorable tool that holds possibilities for resolvingsomepracticalproblemof the ballmill.

5 Conclusions
(1) In the data acquisition region onthe mill shell,the RMSamplitudeof the vibrationisatitsmaximumvalueat a certain angular position and it decreases when the angular position is either increased or decreased. This angular position represents the position of the maximum vibrationpointonthemillshell. (2) It has been found from all experiments that the angularpositionofthemaximumvibrationpositiononthe millshelldecreaseswithincreasein the filllevel. (3)Thecomparisonbetweenthetraditionalandthe new characteristic variable of the fill level shows that the characteristic variable proposed in this paper is superior, andisnotsubjecttotheinfluenceoftheballloadandthe watercontent inthe coal. (4) The research of this paper shows that the angular position of the maximum vibration point as the characteristicvariabletomeasure the filllevelisafeasible and very attractive approach. At the same time the vibration signals of the mill shell have huge potential to studythecollisionofballsinthemill,thevibrationfeature andfaultofthemillshell,theseworksdeserveourfurther investigation. References

Fig.10.Comparisonof the angularpositionof themaximumvibrationpointonthemillshell between the experiments, theoreticalanalysis andDEMsimulationatvariousfilllevelcases

Afurthercomparisonshowsthatsomedifferencesexist in the experimental data, the values of theoretical calculation and the DEM simulation. And the difference between theresults of the theoretical calculation and the DEMsimulationhasbeendiscussedindetail inRefs.[13]. Comparing with the result of the DEM simulation, the resultofthe theoreticalcalculationhasagreaterdifference with the experimental data, and the reason is that in the theoretical calculation the motion of the steel balls and coal in the roller, and the relative sliding existing in the outermost layer steel ball and the mill wall were not considered.Themainreasonofthedifferencebetweenthe results of the experiment and the DEM simulation is that

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Biographicalnotes
HUANGPeng,bornin1981,iscurrentlyalectureratSchoolof Mechanical Engineering, Southeast University, China. He received his PHD degree from Southeast University, China, in 2010. His research interests include signal processing and soft measurement. Tel:+862552090512Email:feihonghp@163.com JIA Minping, born in 1960, is currently a professor anda PhD candidate supervisor at School of Mechanical Engineering, Southeast University, China.He received his PHDdegree from SoutheastUniversity,China,in1991.Hismainresearchinterests include vibration analysis, fault diagnosis, nonlinear dynamic system identification, artificial intelligence theory and application. Tel:+862552090512Email: mpjia@seu.edu.cn ZHONG Binglin, born in 1951, is currently a professor and a PhDcandidatesupervisoratSchoolofMechanicalEngineering, Southeast University, China.He received his PHDdegree from University of Wales, England, in 1994. His main research interests include dynamic system modeling and prediction, equipmentconditionmonitoringandfaultdiagnosis. Tel: +862552090512