Abstract
An important prerequisite for the generation of realistic material behavior with the Discrete Element Method (DEM) is the correct determination of the material-specific simulation parameters. Usually, this is done in a process called calibration. One main disadvantage of classical calibration is the fact that it is a non-learning approach. This means the knowledge about the functional relationship between parameters and simulation responses does not evolve over time, and the number of necessary simulations per calibration sequence respectively per investigated material stays the same. To overcome these shortcomings, a new method called Metamodel-based Global Calibration (MBGC) is introduced. Instead of performing expensive simulation runs taking several minutes to hours of time, MBGC uses a metamodel which can be computed in fractions of a second to search for an optimal parameter set. The metamodel was trained with data from several hundred simulation runs and is able to predict simulation responses in dependence of a given parameter set with very high accuracy. To ensure usability for the calibration of a wide variety of bulk materials, the variance of particle size distributions (PSD) is included in the metamodel via parametric PSD-functions, whose parameters serve as additional input values for the metamodel.
Highlights
In recent years, discrete element method (DEM) has proven to be a suitable tool for simulating the behavior of different kinds of granular materials
In addition to application-specific problems, all those who deal with DEM face the same problem at some point—the determination of the material-specific simulation parameters
For training of the different metamodels, 563 parameters sets generated by fully sequential space-filling design algorithm (FSSF-f) algorithm have been used
Summary
Discrete element method (DEM) has proven to be a suitable tool for simulating the behavior of different kinds of granular materials. In addition to application-specific problems, all those who deal with DEM face the same problem at some point—the determination of the material-specific simulation parameters. These include particle density, particle shape and particle size distribution and the contact model parameters that define the interactions of the particles with each other or between particles and walls. The simple reason for this is that many contact model parameters are abstractions and simplifications of reality; they have no physical counterpart and cannot be determined by measurements. A parameter set is sought for which the simulated material behavior corresponds as closely as possible to that of the real material.
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