The use of a virtual development tools for testing new designs of pelleting rollers is obvious, since the production costs of these are very high. Goal of design optimization is to reduce wear on the pelleting die rollers, increase life time, rise pelleting efficiency and reduce process costs.
In this paper, a short comparison of different numerical approaches, like FEM, CFD and DEM as utilized in literature for pelleting process is given. In particular the DEM approach seems to be appropriate, but very less information can be found regarding the modeling of pelletization process. Further, the structure of a numerical model is described, which scales the entire pelletization process of a mobile pellet harvester down to the processes in a representative segment. A semi-automated way to create the filling particles, which represent the precompressed material in the die holes, is than described. The numerical model is validated by comparison of wear pattern, torque etc. to experimental results. Finally, an overview of the correlation between design changes to target process values is given.