The design of machinery for handling granular materials relies mainly on empirical methods and in-house engineering knowledge. This traditional approach provides incremental improvements that are often limited. Advancements in simulation and optimization can offer a promising alternative approach. Most of the research involved in improving or optimizing equipment design does not include the realistic performance of the new prototype and as such it is uncertain that the predicted performance is also guaranteed in practice.

In this study, a design framework for a new generation of machinery handling granular materials, grabs, has been established that includes a full-scale validation step. This has been proven to lead to a breakthrough in equipment design. This design framework uses a co-simulation between Discrete Element Method (DEM) and Multi Body Dynamics (MBD), thus, capturing operational conditions in full-scale. The DEM simulation supported design step integrated as the main step to generate new prototypes. The performance of the prototype is evaluated by conducting full-scale experiments, thus validating the adequacy of the new design as well as the accuracy of the co-simulation. Through this a full design cycle has been fulfilled and a validated model has been achieved that is independent of specific design configurations.

 用于处理粒状物料的机械的设计主要依靠经验方法和内部工程知识。这种传统方法提供的增量改进通常是有限的。仿真和优化方面的进步可以提供一种有前途的替代方法。涉及改进或优化设备设计的大多数研究都不包括新原型的实际性能，因此不确定在实践中是否也可以保证预期的性能。

在这项研究中，已经建立了用于处理颗粒状物料的新一代机械的设计框架，其中包括全面的验证步骤。 事实证明，这导致了设备设计方面的突破。该设计框架在离散元素方法（DEM）和多体动力学（MBD）之间进行了联合仿真，从而全面捕获了操作条件。DEM仿真支持将设计步骤集成为生成新原型的主要步骤。通过进行全面的实验来评估原型的性能，从而验证新设计的充分性以及协同仿真的准确性。通过这一过程，完整的设计周期得以实现，并且已经获得了独立于特定设计配置的经过验证的模型。