On energy transfer and dissipation of intruder impacting granular materials based on discrete element simulations

Abstract

The impact process of a rigid intruder on granular materials can reveal some fundamental physical phenomena related to granular materials. Most existing investigations on impact problems of granular materials are mainly focused on the phenomenological description of the impact process without comprehensive understanding of energy dispersion of granular materials. In this paper, the discrete element method (DEM) is adopted to investigate the impact process of granular materials subject to an intruder. The kinetic and potential energy of the intruder is transferred to granular materials through the contact surface during impact. The granular material achieves dynamic equilibrium at the macroscopic level. The results reveal that the momentum transfer is typically radial at the collision point, indicating that the friction between particles and the intruder is not crucial. The shape and size of intruder significantly affects the energy transfer and the contact area between intruder and granular material. There is a quantitative relationship between the proportion of granular material involved in energy dissipation, the dissipation time and the energy transferred to the granular system, particularly when the granular system is sufficiently large.