Abstract
The representation of particles of complex shapes is one of the key challenges of numerical simulations based on the discrete element method (DEM). A novel algorithm has been developed by the authors to accurately represent 2D arbitrary particles for DEM modelling. In this paper, the algorithm is extended from 2D to 3D to model convex polyhedral particles based on multisphere methods, which includes three steps: the placement of spheres at the corners, along the edges, and on the facets in sequence. To give a good representation of a polyhedral particle, the spheres are placed tangent to the particle surface in each step. All spheres placed in the three steps are clumped together into a clump in DEM. In addition, the mass properties of the clump are determined based on the corresponding polyhedral particle to obtain accurate simulation results. Finally, an example is used to validate the robust and automatic performance of the algorithm in generating a sphere clump model for an assembly of polyhedral particles. A current FORTRAN version of the algorithm is available by contacting the authors.
Highlights
Discrete element method (DEM), initially proposed by CUNDALL and STRACK in 1979 [1], provides a powerful tool to perform numerical simulations of discrete particle systems
Erefore, DEM modelling of granular materials in which the particles are represented by discs or spheres suffers from limited capability in capturing essential aspects of interparticle interactions and corresponding mechanical behaviors [2, 3]
There are two different methods: new primitive methods and multisphere methods. e new primitive methods mainly lie in the direct implementation of nonspherical primitives such as ellipsoids [5,6,7], polyhedra [2, 8, 9], and spherocylinders [10, 11] in DEM
Summary
Discrete element method (DEM), initially proposed by CUNDALL and STRACK in 1979 [1], provides a powerful tool to perform numerical simulations of discrete particle systems. Polyhedral particles are widely encountered in the field of granular materials such as railway ballast [21, 22], concrete aggregate [23], and soil-rock mixture (S-RM) [24] In those numerical simulations, they are often simplified as convex and irregular polyhedra whose surfaces consist of several triangle facets. The available multisphere methods have been proposed to represent such polyhedral particles with clumps of spheres, they cannot give a good approximation of the particle shape. A novel algorithm developed by ZHANG et al [25] is extended from 2D to 3D to accurately represent convex and irregular polyhedral particles based on multisphere methods for DEM simulations
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