A texture inheritance model for spherical particles in particle replacement method (PRM) schemes for breakage in discrete element method (DEM) simulations

Abstract

Various models have been developed in recent years to simulate particle breakage in discrete element method (DEM) simulations. However, texture inheritance of fragments is only available for certain complex particle shapes or bonded particle models, significantly increasing the computation time. We propose a spherical particle model coupled with a particle replacement method (PRM) scheme, which incorporates texture inheritance through an intermediate mapping step. In this way, the model benefits from the computational advantages of spherical particles without losing texture information during the breakage process.The model is evaluated by applying it to artificially generated particles incorporating texture information from a lithium-containing slag measured by X-ray microscopy (XRM) and an artificially generated magnetite iron ore. Comparisons of the liberation distributions with other models in the literature match with minor deviations. In addition, the liberation distributions calculated using the model are consistent with randomly sampled particles.