A spheropolyhedral-based discrete element lattice Boltzmann method for simulation of non-spherical adhesive particulate flow

Abstract

Non-spherical particulate flow is commonly encountered in nature, industry and our daily life. But up to now, there still lack effective model to describe the adhesive elastic collision between non-spherical microparticles. To solve this problem, a spheropolyhedral-based discrete element method (DEM) combined with Johnson-Kendall-Roberts (JKR) model is proposed. The contact between non-spherical particles is attributed to the contacts between three geometry features, including vertice-vertice (V-V), vertice-edge(V-E), vertice-face (V-F) and edge-edge (E-E). The JKR adhesive model is modified to calculate the contact force of the contacting geometry features based on the actual contact area. Meanwhile, the lattice Boltzmann coupled with the immersed moving boundary (LB-IMB) method is employed to simulate the fluid flow and fluid-particle interaction. The novel spheropolyhedral-based DE-LBM is verified to be accurate and effective by several experiments and the data in references. Finally, an application test for simulating the packing process of non-spherical microparticles is presented. The method well predicts the packing structure of both adhesive and non-adhesive non-spherical particles, meaning that it can be easily extended to simulate the massive non-spherical microparticles with high effectiveness and efficiency. Program summaryProgram Title: adhesive contact force model for non-spherical particleCPC Library link to program files:https://doi.org/10.17632/vswvv7ppz2.1Developer's repository link:https://github.com/QIAN-C/adhesive-force-model-for-non-sphericalLicensing provisions: GNU General Public License v3Programming language: C++Nature of problem: Various methods have been proposed to handle the complex shapes of non-spherical particles in the discrete element method. However, there is still a lack of effective models for calculating the contact force between the non-spherical fine particles, particularly the adhesive forces.Solution method: Based on the sphere-polygon algorithm and the JKR model, this program has developed a contact force model that can accurately calculate adhesive forces between non-spherical fine particles within the framework of the open source library MechSys (URL: http://mechsys.nongnu.org/index.shtml).