A GPU based Hybrid Material point and Discrete element method (MPDEM) algorithm and validation

Abstract

The interaction between granular material and rigid bodies or complex boundaries are common in geotechnical engineering and industry. A hybrid MPDEM algorithm is proposed to simulate these kinds of problems. It is combined with the ability for solving granular material in MPM and the advantages of contact detection in DEM, which can be applied to solve sliding and impacting behavior of rigid blocks. Furthermore, the coupling algorithm based on GPU can be adopted for large-scale simulation to improve the calculation efficiency which has powerful advantages in geologic hazards simulation with high efficiency. To validate the algorithm, the sliding friction and impact effects are conducted to check the contact detection and force calculation for interaction between granular and block or boundary. Besides, the simulation results of granular impacting on the blocks are in good agreement with the experiment, which represents the feasibility and ability of algorithm to solve the interaction with granular materials and rigid-blocks or boundary systems. Through efficiency analysis, it is concluded that the computational performance is higher with the increase in particle number, compared with the pure MPM contact method. Additionally, the Tesla V100 card is a better choice for large-scale (particle number more than 1 million) simulations.