A method has been developed to deduce a "breakup" force in a packed bed based on measured pressure drop and internal cavity size hysteresis data in a conical spouted bed. The pressure drop over the vertical jet is estimated by the Eulerian-Eulerian two-fluid model using the commercial Fluent software. The pressure drop over the packed bed is extracted from the measured total pressure drop following a flow rate descending process in the spouted bed, while the "breakup" force is determined from the combination of measured total pressure drop and internal jet height following the flow ascending process, the simulated pressure drop over the gas jet and the pressure drop over the loosely packed upper bed section. Such a proposed method can be applied in the future to develop a generalized expression for the "breakup" force in spouted beds and other packed bed systems where a vertical fluid jet is issued into the packed particles. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.