Powder Technology 212 (2011) 224230

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Powder Technology
j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / p ow t e c

Experimental investigations and modelling of the ball motion in planetary ball mills
S. Rosenkranz , S. Breitung-Faes, A. Kwade
Institute for Particle Technology, TU Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Volkmaroder Strasse 5, 38104 Braunschweig, Germany

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 1 November 2010
Received in revised form 26 April 2011
Accepted 21 May 2011
Available online 31 May 2011
Keywords:
Planetary ball mill
Ball motion
Discrete Element Method
Modelling
Stress energy

a b s t r a c t
Planetary ball mills feature attractive properties, like the possibility of dry or wet operation, straightforward
handling, cleanability and moderate costs. Consequently they are very well suited for lab scale process
development in diverse industries, including pharmaceuticals and new materials. A number of questions still
remain unanswered regarding this mill type. These include the stress conditions as well as transfer of the
grinding results to other types of mills with free moving balls, such as stirred media mills, which can be built in
large scales and operated continuously.
In order to measure the ball motion and, thus, the stress conditions, a planetary ball mill was equipped with a
high speed video camera, so that the grinding ball motion during the comminution process can be recorded
and analysed. The inuence of important process parameters on the ball motion pattern was assessed in this
study, namely speed ratio, ball lling ratio and friction conditions, the latter by applying different mill feeds.
The experimental results show considerable inuences of the ball lling ratio and friction conditions. The
measured ball motion patterns differ signicantly from ball trajectories which were calculated using kinetic
equations proposed in older publications.
In addition to the measurements the ball motion was simulated using a three dimensional Discrete Element
Model (DEM). An attempt was made to account for mill feed via altered friction coefcients. Correlations of
the DEM results and experimental ndings at different operating conditions show a good agreement. Based on
simulation data the frequency distribution of the stress energies in the mill could be calculated and compared
for different operating conditions.
2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Due to their high energy density planetary ball mills are especially
suited for ne and ultra-ne grinding of hard and brittle material
down to the nanometre size range [1], for mechanical alloying and for
mechanochemical reactions (among others [25]). In comparison to
ball mills and vibrating mills higher stress intensities can be generated
due to the centrifugal eld. The stress intensity describes which
energy the mass of the feed particles caught between the grinding
balls are stressed [6]. High stress intensities and other benets
(simple set-up and handling, cleanability, moderate costs) make
batch operated planetary ball mills very well suited and popular for
application in laboratory scale process development, e.g. in pharmaceutical industry [7].
A transfer problem occurs then, when taking such a newly
developed process to production scale: due to their working principle,
large installation sizes of planetary ball mills show major technical
difculties in the mills' drive systems [8], with cooling of the grinding
chambers in dry grinding and the design of feeding and product
Corresponding author. Tel.: + 49 531 3919621; fax: + 49 531 3919633.
E-mail addresses: s.rosenkranz@tu-braunschweig.de (S. Rosenkranz),
s.breitung@tu-braunschweig.de (S. Breitung-Faes), a.kwade@tu-braunschweig.de
(A. Kwade).
0032-5910/$ see front matter 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.powtec.2011.05.021

removal for continuous operation. Since these issues are not

satisfactorily resolved to date, planetary ball mills are insignicant
for large scale production. Therefore, other tumbling mill types (such
as ball mills, vibrating mills or stirred media mills) are the engineer's
choice when taking the newly developed process to a large scale and
continuous operation. Such transfer to another mill type requires
knowledge about the stress conditions in the planetary ball mill in
order to ensure similar conditions and product quality. Apart from this
transfer problem, knowledge about the stress conditions is also very
valuable for research and development regarding mechanical alloying
and mechanochemical reactions.
In order to characterise the stress conditions in planetary ball mills,
detailed information about the motion patterns of the grinding balls
present in this mill type is needed. The grinding ball movement varies
depending on the mill operating parameters, including ball type and
size and feed type and size, so these have to be considered carefully.
DEM modelling has become a very popular technique for of the
evaluation of these dependencies in ball milling. It provides insight to
additional quantitative information which is not readily accessible via
experiments, like complete velocity and force distributions. The
combined effort of researchers in this area aims at a predictive model,
which could be used, amongst others, for the above-named transfer
problem. A comprehensive review of previous work on the DEM
modelling of tumbling mills was given by Mishra [9,10]. Publications

S. Rosenkranz et al. / Powder Technology 212 (2011) 224230

especially focused on DEM modelling of planetary ball mills include

the analysis of grinding ball motion [1113], power draw prediction
[12] calculation of impact stress energy distributions and its
correlation to grinding results [14,15] or mill wear [16]. Besides
DEM modelling, experimental studies (among others [1719]) remain
of great importance, not only for the model validation.
Despite many valuable contributions, the understanding of the
correlations of stress conditions, grinding ball motion and operating
parameters in planetary ball mills is only intermittent. The objective
of this work is to deepen this understanding by the joint use of
experimental and DEM modelling techniques. Effects of inuencing
parameters like friction shall be claried and DEM results are
evaluated with respect to the calculation of a stress energy
distribution, which could be used for the direct comparison of the
prevailing stress conditions in a planetary ball mill. This output can
then be used in an improved grinding process model.

225

parameters are possible. In this study, the inuence of operating

parameters on motion patterns of the ball lling is analysed. The
determination of trajectories of single balls is in progress.
Using different gear sets, the mill's speed ratio, k = grinding
chamber angular velocity / sun wheel angular velocity, was varied
between 3 and 1. The stainless steel grinding chamber used
had a nominal volume of 500 ml. Stainless steel balls were employed
in all experiments. The ball lling ratio, GB = grinding ball bulk
volume / grinding chamber volume, was set to 0.3 for the standard case.
In one set of experiments the lling ratio was increased up to a value
of 0.7 in order to prove its inuence on the ball motion. The varied
parameters were studied without mill feed in a rst step. In a second
step mill feed was added with a feed lling ratio, F = mill feed bulk
volume / grinding ball voids volume, of 0.5. Table 1 summarises the
process parameters in this study.
2.2. Simulation

2. Materials and methods

2.1. Experimental set-up
A laboratory scale planetary ball mill (Retsch PM400) was
equipped with a test rig which enables the observation and recording
of the grinding ball motion inside the grinding chamber. A high speed
camera was xed on the sun wheel (Fig. 1). Lighting is supplied by
several LEDs and spotlights, respectively. The camera is oriented in a
way that the sun wheel centre is always on the image's top, so that an
image of the grinding chamber and its lling similar to a tube ball mill
is generated.
The camera enables recording and analysis of the images on a
computer at a rate of 250 frames per second. Thus, both qualitative
comparison of the ball lling motion pattern and quantitative analysis
of individual ball velocities and trajectories for varied process

In addition to the experimental investigations, the grinding ball

motion is examined by DEM simulations. The DEM-approach used in
this work was originally introduced for geological investigations [20]
and is nowadays applied in process engineering for the simulation of
mills and other processes including particle systems [21,22,10,23]. It is
a time stepping algorithm that requires the repeated application of
Newton's second law of motion to each particle (grinding ball) inside
the considered system (grinding chamber), a forcedisplacement law
to each contact and a constant updating of particle and wall (grinding
chamber) positions. According to this model the translational and
rotational motions of a single grinding ball can be described by
Newton's second law of motion:
dvGB
= FGB
dt

dGB
= MGB
dt

mGB

IGB

where mGB, vGB, GB and IGB are the mass, translational velocity,
angular velocity and moment of inertia of a single grinding ball inside
the grinding chamber. FGB and MGB are the forces and moments acting
on the grinding ball, respectively. The most important force acting on
a grinding ball inside a planetary ball mill is the contact force. The
contact force can be generally modelled by a springdash pot system
with friction element. In this work a non-linear contact model based
upon the work of Mindlin [24] was used. It is the so called HertzMindlin contact model provided with the commercially available
software EDEM 2.3 (DEM Solutions Ltd.). The detailed contact force
calculation, as described in Ref. [25], is shown in the following by Eqs.
(3)(12).
The resulting contact force is given by:
n

F = F + F + Fd + Fd

Table 1
Operating parameters of the laboratory planetary ball mill. Standard values for this
study are typed bold.

Fig. 1. Photograph of the experimental set-up with camera xed to the sun wheel.
Camera position is highlighted by a dashed square, grinding chamber positions by a
square.

Parameter

Value(s)

Unit

Speed ratio k
Sun wheel angular velocity s
Sun wheel diameter dS
Grinding chamber diameter dG
Grinding chamber height hG
Ball diameter dGB
Ball lling ratio GB
Feed lling ratio F

3; 2.5; 2; 1
20.9
300
100
72
10
0.3; 0.5; 0.7
0; 0.5

s 1
mm
mm
mm
mm

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S. Rosenkranz et al. / Powder Technology 212 (2011) 224230

were the superscripts n and t denominate normal and tangential

directions, respectively. F n and F t are the contact forces, Fdn and Fdt are
the damping forces with:
n

F =

4 p n32
E R
3

Fd = 2

5 p
n
Sn m vrel
6

S = 2E
n

p
R n

t t

F = S

5
6

contacts were taken from the literature [26], corresponding to the

initial case of steel grinding balls without mill feed in the steel
grinding chamber. In this case the simulation results regarding ball
motion show a good agreement with the camera images from the
experiment (see Fig. 2). The time step utilised in the simulation is 18%
of the Rayleigh time step to ensure numerical stability [27]. Table 2
summarises the simulation parameters. Based on these, a systematic
variation of the friction coefcients was carried out to investigate the
possibility to account for the mill feed by applying adequate values of
the friction coefcients, a method which was successfully used in the
past [28].

7
3. Results and discussion

and
3.1. Experiments
t

Fmax = S F
t
Fd

r
5 p
t
= 2
St m vrel
6

t
S = 8G

p
R n

9
10

where R, m, E, G are the reduced radius, mass, Young's modulus

and shear modulus of a single grinding ball. S n and S t are the
n
t
stiffnesses, vrel
and vrel
denominate the relative contact velocities and
n
t
t
and the overlaps. The maximum tangential force Fmax
is limited
by coulomb friction with the static friction coefcient S. is the
damping coefcient with:
ln e
= p
ln2 e + 2

11

e denominates the restitution coefcient. Rolling friction is regarded

by applying an additional torque i to the contacting surfaces:
n

i = jF j R Ri i

12

with R being the coefcient of rolling friction, Ri the distance of the

contact point from the center of mass and i the unit angular velocity
vector of the object at the contact point.
The restitution coefcient e and the friction coefcients S and R
can be determined experimentally via drop tests and tribological
measurements. For this study, model parameters for steelsteel

3.1.1. Effect of speed ratio

The effect of mill speed ratio k on the grinding ball motion was
investigated using the described mill test rig. The other parameters
were set to the standard values as given in Table 1. No mill feed was
added to the grinding chamber. The resulting grinding ball motion is
depicted in Fig. 2 (top row). The comparison of the images shows that
no visible differences in grinding ball motion pattern (cascading,
cataracting or centrifugation) occur when the speed ratio is varied at
low friction coefcients, i.e. without mill feed. In all four cases
cascading of the balls is observed. This result is supported even better
by analysis of the recorded lm sequences. Results of the DEM model
at corresponding conditions are in qualitative agreement with this
experimental observation (Fig. 2 bottom row). According to these
ndings, the mill speed ratio does not inuence the grinding ball
motion signicantly for the investigated parameter congurations, i.e.
particularly relatively low friction coefcients. Further experimental
results show similar results in the presence of mill feed, i.e. at
increased friction (Fig. 3): only slight differences in charge position
can be seen between k = 1 and k = 3. This contradicts prior
considerations [29] and other theoretical calculations [30], which
identied the speed ratio as a key inuencing parameter on grinding
ball motion pattern. According to Ref. [29], the motion pattern should
change to centrifugation at a speed ratio of k = 3. These existing
analytical models do not consider friction and, therefore, are only
applicable to a limited extent. As will be shown in Section 3.1.2,
friction conditions have to be considered as important factors for the
ball motion in planetary ball mills. The speed ratio is the subject of

Fig. 2. Effect of varied speed ratio k on grinding ball motion pattern at low friction (no mill feed added). Top row: experiment, bottom row: simulation.

S. Rosenkranz et al. / Powder Technology 212 (2011) 224230

Table 2
Simulation parameters. Standard values for this study are typed bold.
Parameter

Value(s)

Unit

Grinding ball diameter dGB

Grinding ball density GB
Shear modulus G
Poisson's ratio
Restitution coefcient e
Static friction coefcient S
Rolling friction coefcient R
Time step

10
7800
80
0.3
0.7
0.2; 0.35; 0.5; 1
0.01; 0.1; 0.5
10 6

mm
kg/m3
GPa

future investigations, especially involving various friction conditions

by using different mill feeds.

3.1.2. Effect of grinding ball lling ratio

The grinding ball lling ratio was varied between 0.3 and 0.7
without mill feed. Other parameters were kept at standard values (see
Table 1). The resulting grinding ball motion is displayed in Fig. 4. For
GB = 0.3 a cascading motion can be observed with the balls being
taken along by the grinding chamber wall and then rolling upon each
other from the bulk's top to its base (Fig. 4 left). At this lling ratio, no
detachment of balls from the wall or other balls occurs, i.e. any ball is
always in contact to another ball or the wall. In this case the stress
mechanism on an added feed would be mostly compression and shear
stress between the grinding balls or grinding balls and the grinding
chamber wall. This changes signicantly when the lling ratio is
increased: freely ying balls are observed for GB = 0.5 as well as for
GB = 0.7. In the case of GB = 0.5 a motion pattern known as
cataracting occurs (Fig. 4 centre). A fraction of the balls detaches
from the grinding chamber wall and follows a parabola trajectory in
ight before impacting into the bulk of balls. The occurrence of ying
balls is due to the change in ball positions when the lling fraction is
increased: the bulk of ball lls an increased volume fraction of the
grinding chamber. Therefore, balls are forced into positions at the
grinding chamber wall where the resulting forces promote a
detachment. Besides the stress by compression and shear stressing
by impact also occurs. When the ball lling ratio is increased further to
GB = 0.7, the bulk takes so much of the space inside the grinding
chamber, that part of the balls are being centrifuged (Fig. 4 right).
They align on the chamber wall and follow its rotation with almost no
relative velocity.
It is known for a varied lling ratio in planetary ball mills [31], that
GB = 0.3 results in the most effective feed grinding, i.e. smallest
particle sizes. With this knowledge, the analysis of Fig. 4 indicates that
the cascading ball motion might be the most desirable motion pattern.
However, this result is only valid under the assumption that the ball
motion is not affected by the presence of mill feed. It will be shown in
the following section, that considerable changes of friction change this
nding.

227

3.1.3. Effect of mill feed

In order to analyse the inuence of feed material on the grinding
process, a comparison of the grinding ball motion in presence of
different mill feeds was conducted. Median particle sizes of the
powders were about 60 m. The feed lling ratio was set to F = 0.5.
Other parameters were held at the standard values (see Table 1). The
charge was milled for 1 min before recording the image sequence in
order to allow for mixing and adhesion of feed powder on the grinding
balls and grinding chamber wall.
Considerable differences in motion can be observed depending on
the feed material (Fig. 5). Without any mill feed (Fig. 5a) the grinding
balls carry out the cascading motion as discussed before. In the
presence of limestone and alumina (Fig. 5b and c) the dynamics near
the grinding chamber wall are slightly increased due to increased
friction. Signicant changes occur for marble powder (Fig. 5d): The
motion, shape and location of the ball bulk become those of the
cataracting motion. Freely ying grinding balls are observable.
Additionally, the grinding balls are coated by a visible layer of the
mill feed, so the friction conditions must differ considerably from
clean grinding balls.
These experimental results explicitly reveal the inuence of
changed friction conditions on the grinding ball motion due to mill
feed. The friction conditions do not vary only for different material
types, but also with decreasing feed particle size and, accordingly,
increasing adhesion due to an increasing grinding time. Thus, a
comprehensive characterisation of the grinding ball motion and their
correlation to the process parameters, especially the friction conditions, is necessary in order to fully understand the stress conditions
inside the planetary ball mill.

3.1.4. Analysis of friction effects by simulation

Since the experimental results show the importance of the friction
conditions for the ball motion and, therefore, the stress conditions, an
attempt was made to simulate the effects of mill feed by altering the
friction coefcients in the DEM simulations without actually simulating small feed particles. Consequently, supplementary studies of the
planetary ball milling process would be feasible. Additional information can be gained about the stress conditions, like the amount of
collisions and the stress energy distributions which are not accessible
in the experiments. A sensitivity analysis was carried out in order to
evaluate the effects of the static and rolling friction coefcients on the
simulation results. Based on the standard values, corresponding to the
case without mill feed in the grinding chamber as shown in Fig. 2, both
friction coefcients were increased systematically. The resulting
grinding ball motions for all parameter combinations considered
here are displayed in Fig. 6. With increased friction coefcients the
simulated grinding ball motion as well as the shape and location of the
bulk of balls change similar to the experimental results with addition
of different mill feeds. Thus, a qualitative correlation of mill feed and
simulation friction coefcients can be deducted by direct comparison

Fig. 3. Effect of varied speed ratio k on grinding ball motion pattern at increased friction (in the presence of marble powder, F = 0.5).

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S. Rosenkranz et al. / Powder Technology 212 (2011) 224230

Fig. 4. Inuence of ball lling ratio on ball motion pattern.

of the qualitative ball motion in the experiment and simulation. A

combination of S = 0.2 and R = 0.1 in the simulation qualitatively
corresponds to the limestone or alumina feed experimental results,
whereas S = 0.5 and R = 0.1 in the simulation correspond to the
marble experimental ndings. Both, static and rolling friction coefcients show an inuence on the motion patterns. With increased
friction coefcients, the transfer of kinetic energy in tangential
direction between colliding balls becomes more efcient, while the
overall energy dissipation increases. Therefore the grinding balls are
distributed over a larger fraction of the grinding chamber at high
friction values. These effects were similarly reported for simulations of
stirred media mills [26].
The effect of friction on the simulation result was analysed
quantitatively by evaluating the velocity data of all collisions for
different combinations of the static and rolling friction coefcients.
The basis of the variation is the standard case without mill feed. In this
work, the term collision refers to a completed sequence of initial
contact (no overlap in time step t 1), one or more time steps of
overlap and nal detachment (again no physical overlap) between
two contact partners. The frequency distributions of the collisions'
relative velocities (measured along the axis between the centres of
the contact partners) for 0.3 s simulated real time analysed are
displayed in Fig. 7. Data are normalised to collisions per second. All
collision data were analysed, although repeated noisy collisions (e.g.
repeated collisions of balls rolling on a wall surface) were not omitted.
This fact makes the collision frequency values look unnaturally high.
Future work includes ltering collision data in order to distinguish the
valuable collision information from noisy collisions. The change in
number of collisions per time of a single grinding ball (averaged by the
total number of grinding balls) is depicted in Fig. 8.
For increased static friction (marble-case) the distribution is
shifted to higher relative velocities (see Fig. 7). As shown in Fig. 8, the
number of collisions per time and ball also increases signicantly,
compared to the no feed-case. An increase in rolling friction for
constant static friction results in complex effects: the distribution
shifts to slightly smaller relative velocities (Fig. 7 no feed- and
limestone, alumina-cases) while the number of collisions per time
decreases. For higher static friction, the effect of increasing rolling
friction is reverted: the number of collisions increases for increased
rolling friction.

In order to characterise the stress conditions, the so called stress

energy SE can be applied which was introduced, among others, by
Kwade [32,33]. The stress energy is a characteristic measure of the
maximum amount of energy which can be supplied to the feed
particles in one stress event, i.e. a collision of grinding balls. It can be
calculated from the relative velocity and the masses of the colliding
objects by the following proportionality
2

SE =

vrel m1 m2
2m1 + m2

13

corresponding to the kinetic energy change of a perfectly plastic

collision as it is known from collision theory [34].
Based on the results shown in Fig. 7 stress energy distributions can
be calculated from the simulations. They are shown in Fig. 9 for the
different simulation cases corresponding to varied feeds. In contrast to
the frequency distributions of Fig. 7, distributions of the fraction
smaller than a certain stress energy value are displayed. This plot
allows to compare the mill's stress conditions at different operation
parameters and to choose a suitable parameter set to t the potential
feed material.
The increase of static friction (marble-case) results in increased
median values of the stress energy per collision, while increased
rolling friction (limestone, alumina-case) causes a slight decrease in
the median value of the stress energy per collision. Of interest is also
the domain of high stress energies (N0.001 J), resulting from high
relative collision velocities. Here differences occur for all example
cases shown, especially for the marble-case with its relatively high
friction values.
Consequently, the possibility to qualitatively model the effect of
feed lling by use of adequate friction coefcients could be
demonstrated. Nevertheless, quantitative investigations are also
topic of future work. Moreover, the friction coefcients for the
simulations shall be determined experimentally by model experiments in shear testers [3537] or tribometers [38,39]. Furthermore,
the simulation approach has to be analysed more extensively,
especially including quantitative studies of ball velocities, trajectories
and friction conditions. The sensitivity analysis could identify complex
effects for varying static and rolling friction, which are not yet fully
understood. Future work has to clarify these ndings, including

Fig. 5. Inuence of different mill feed materials on ball motion pattern, a) no feed, b) limestone, c) alumina, d) marble.

S. Rosenkranz et al. / Powder Technology 212 (2011) 224230

229

Fig. 6. Inuence of varied friction coefcients on simulated ball motion. Standard values
are typed bold, ball motion qualitatively tted to different feeds (compare Fig. 5).
Fig. 9. Inuence of varied friction coefcients on stress energy distributions of
collisions. Simulation was qualitatively matched to ball motion in experiments with no
feed, limestone or alumina and marble (see Fig. 6).

Fig. 7. Inuence of varied friction coefcients on relative velocity distributions of

collisions. Simulation was qualitatively matched to ball motion in experiments with no
feed, limestone or alumina and marble (see Fig. 6).

rigorous analysis of different collision types (ballball, ballwall,

noise ltering).

kinetic models. The main reason is the neglect of friction and slip in
these prior considerations.
Different ball motion patterns exist at varied grinding ball lling
ratios, namely with increasing lling ratio cascading over cataracting
to centrifugation.
Furthermore, the grinding ball motion is strongly affected by the
friction arising, among others, from different feed materials. Thus,
friction necessarily has to be considered in studies on stress
conditions in the planetary ball mill. Utilizing a Discrete Element
simulation model, a sensitivity analysis shows that both friction
coefcients, i.e. static and rolling friction coefcients, strongly
inuence ball motion, relative collision velocities and stress energy
distributions. The results fortify the approach to account for mill feed
by changing friction coefcients.
The experimental as well as simulation techniques are currently
being rened to gain further insight to the grinding ball motion as
well as stress conditions and their dependency on the process
parameters in the planetary ball mill. Corresponding experiments
with the presence of feed material have to follow in order to identify
the ball motion resulting in optimum product neness. Other
operating parameters, like geometrical changes, have to be looked
at, too.

4. Conclusions
On the basis of video camera images, no considerable inuence of
speed ratio on the grinding ball motion pattern could be observed in
the range 3 b k b 1. This contradicts older theoretical calculations
given in the literature, where the ball motion was calculated based on

Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge nancial support by the
German Research Foundation (DFG). The planetary ball mill was
kindly supplied by Retsch GmbH. Furthermore, support by DEM
Solutions Ltd. within the EDEM Academic Partner Program (EAPP) is
thankfully acknowledged.
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Fig. 8. Inuence of varied friction coefcients on the number of collisions per time and
grinding ball.

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