A novel gas distributor fabricated with 3D printing was used in the present work to improve the radial distribution of particles in a circulating turbulent fluidized bed (CTFB). The effect of fractal distributor on a CTFB was studied using cold model tests and numerical simulations. At constant bed height and with other operating conditions, a higher particle concentration was obtained from the two-layer gas distributor, while the one-layer gas distributor produced a more even radial distribution. Additionally, based on the Eulerian/Eulerian method, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model incorporating a modified gas-solid drag model has been used to simulate the fluidized bed. Compared with a traditional drag force model, the modified model produced more accurate predictions (from a comparison of simulated and measured values) for the distribution of the gas and solid phases. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.