Developments in the tools for the investigation of mixing in particulate systems – A review

•Fundamentals of particle mixing and segregation are introduced.•Particle mixer selection rules and characteristics are summarized.•Experimental investigation tools for particle mixing are reviewed.•Numerical investigation tools for particle mixing are reviewed.

Mixing of powders and granular materials of different functions and/or properties is frequently encountered by engineers and scientists. Nevertheless, the guidelines for the selections of particle mixers are still not fully developed and predictions of the mixture quality after mixing operations are still not possible. These are largely due to the fact that the tools for particle mixing studies are far from well developed. In the last decades, advances in experimental and computational methods have brought lights to better particle mixer design and operation. This paper reviews the tools for the investigation of mixing in particulate systems.

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