Abstract: Thermal processing characteristics are the key factors determining the intrinsic quality of tobacco strips during the conditioning process, mainly including leaf moisture content and temperature. Due to the enclosed space of the conditioner, it is difficult to accurately characterize the variations in moisture content and temperature of tobacco strips inside the cylinder under the influence of hot air and mixed water. This study proposed a digital characterization method for the thermal processing characteristics of tobacco strips during the conditioning process suitable for practical production. Firstly, a full-scale conditioner cylinder model and a tobacco strip model were constructed. Then, the online production data was collected, and the variations of sensitive process parameters such as atomized water flow rate and direct injection steam flow rate and the equipment operation parameters such as rotational speed of the conditioner cylinder were extracted as the boundary conditions for the numerical model. Combined with the computational fluid dynamics-discrete element method (CFD-DEM) coupling theory, a multi-field coupling numerical model for discrete-phase particles of flexible tobacco strips and cylinder-flow field was established to analyze the thermal processing characteristics of the cut tobacco during conditioning under different operating conditions. The results showed that: 1) The temperature inside the conditioner cylinder increased continuously with time and stabilized after 40 seconds. The high-temperature zone gradually diffused backwards in the axial direction, and there was a large temperature difference between the feeding chamber and the discharge chamber in the radial direction, with the temperature in the upper part higher than that the lower part. 2) The moisture content in tobacco strips inside the cylinder first increased and then decreased with the rise of temperature, while the temperature of tobacco strips increased continuously and then stabilized, followed by a decrease at the discharge chamber. 3) The errors between the temperature results inside the cylinder, the moisture content and temperature of output tobacco strips and simulation time for the simulated and the comparative experimental results were within a reasonable range, indicating that the simulation model could be used to guide the visualization inside the loosening and conditioning cylinders.