Pile formation and rotating drum experiments followed by DEM simulations using glass beads (1.5 and 3.0 mm diameter) and polyamide spheres (3.0 mm diameter) were conducted. A wide range of rotation velocities was tested (from 1 to 90 rpm), the drum fill degree was set to 50%. The material inclination angles obtained in pile formation experiments were comparable with low speed rotating drum tests. The experimentally obtained results were used to determine DEM friction coefficients. Both, good qualitative and good quantitative agreements between experiments and simulations were found for rotation speeds up to 5 rpm, whereas for higher rotation speeds small discrepancies were observed.