A new algorithm for contact detection between spherical particle and triangulated mesh boundary in discrete element method simulations

In discrete element method (DEM) simulations of real scale, the spherical particles are commonly employed for increasing the computation speed, and the complex boundary models are represented by triangle meshes with controllable accuracy. A new contact detection algorithm has been developed to resolve the contacts between the spheres and the triangle mesh boundaries. The application of the barycentric coordinates makes this algorithm more efficient to identify contacts in the intersection test. As a particle probably collides with several triangles at the same time, the multiple contacts would be reported as face contacts, edge contacts, or vertex contacts. Moreover, the particle embedding in a triangle can be also contact with the edges or vertices of the next triangles. These contacts should be considered as invalid for updating contact forces in the DEM. To exclude invalid records from the multiple contacts, the algorithm gives attention to the mesh structure nearby contacts and analyzes all possible collision situations. Numerical experiments have been conducted to verify this algorithm by using the algorithm in the DEM simulation framework. The numerical results suggest that the algorithm can resolve all contacts precisely and stably when the spherical particles collide on the complex boundary circumstances. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Study of shear behavior of granular materials by 3D DEM simulation of the triaxial test in the membrane boundary condition

This paper studies the shear behavior of granular materials by using a three-dimensional (3D) discrete element method (DEM) simulation of the triaxial test. The experimental triaxial tests were conducted on glass beads samples for verification. DEM simulations of the triaxial test were carried out in the membrane boundary condition consisting of 37,989 membrane particles. A new method that divides the irregular sample shape into two parts of cones and parts of three-dimensional simplexes is used to follow the volume change of irregular deformation of samples. The free rotatable upper platen is considered during the shearing process, which influences the shear behavior of samples especially in the residual stage and formations of a single shear band or X-shape shear band. The confining pressures have been demonstrated to influence the rotation angle and angular velocity of the upper platen. Moreover, the timing of replacing a rigid wall boundary condition with the membrane boundary condition is investigated, which affects the porosity of samples before shearing and the mechanical strength. The DEM model in the membrane boundary condition reflects well the evolution of irregular sample deformation and shear band in the shearing process. From the perspective of micro structures, the normal force decreases and the tangential stress increases during the shearing stage. This study greatly improves the accuracy of DEM simulations of the triaxial test in the membrane boundary condition.     

A boundary elements formulation for 3D fretting-wear problems

Computational wear modeling is an extremely time-consuming problem, especially the 3D cases. In this work, a 3D boundary element method (BEM) formulation for wear modeling is proposed and applied to simulate 3D fretting-wear problems under gross sliding and partial slip conditions. The present formulation applies the BEM to approximate the elastic response of solids, and an augmented Lagrangian formulation to solve the contact problem. Contact restrictions fulfilment is established by a set of projection functions, and wear on contact surfaces is computed using the Archard wear law. The BEM proves to be a very suitable numerical method for this kind of mechanical interaction problems, considering only the boundary degrees of freedom involved in the problem and obtaining a very good approximation of contact tractions with a low number of elements. This is very interesting in terms of computational cost reductions of wear modeling, specially in 3D problems. In that regard, an acceleration strategy is applied to the proposed algorithm. It allows to obtain very important reductions on wear simulation times. The proposed methodology is therefore an efficient numerical tool for 3D fretting-wear problems modeling.     

A combined physical and DEM modelling approach to investigate particle shape effects on load movement in tumbling mills

The discrete element method (DEM) which is used to simulate granular flows often assumes spherical shape for particles. This assumption is legitimized by the added complexity of non-spherical shape representation, contact detection and computational cost. In this work, the difference between the dynamics of non-spherical and spherical particles was studied in detail by a combined physical and DEM modeling approach. An in-house developed DEM software called KMPC_DEM©, which was coded to handle non-spherical particles, was used to simulate the behavior of particles. To calibrate the model parameters, a model tumbling mill (100 cm diameter and 10.8 cm length) with one transparent end was used which made accurate photography possible. The tests were performed at filling of 20% and mill speed of 85% of critical speed with steel balls and wood cubes. In the simulation, each cubical particle was represented with clusters of spheres (with identical size) by particle packing algorithm for contact detection and contact-force calculation. Comparison of the simulation and experimental results showed that the difference between the measured and predicted impact toe, shoulder angle and bulk toe angle were 3, 4 and 5°, respectively. The significant change in the charge movement and structure on account of non-spherical particles was reflected in the amount of in-flight charge, and positions of shoulder, impact toe and bulk toe. It found that there was a 17% difference in the amount of in-flight of charge between cubical and spherical particles. The marked difference was attributed to higher interlocking of non-spherical particles in comparison to spherical balls. The results showed that cubical particles participated 5% more in the high energy impact action compared to that of the spherical particles. The simulation computation time increased by 35 times when the shape of particles changed from spherical to cubical.     

基于离散元和有限差分耦合算法的崩塌体和结构碰撞预测分析

采用离散元和有限差分耦合计算方法,对龙洞子崩塌挡墙结构碰撞进行了预测分析。构建了3种崩塌挡墙结构模型,并进行了数值模拟。崩塌体由颗粒模拟,挡墙分别由刚性墙、颗粒、FLAC中的实体单元模拟。基于离散元和有限差分耦合算法的数值模拟,分析了不同模型的挡墙动力响应和变形。通过数值模拟结果的对比分析,选出了最优的结构模型和参数,为有效防御崩塌的防护结构设计提供理论依据。     

A boundary condition in Padé series for frequency‐domain solution of wave propagation in unbounded domains

A boundary condition satisfying the radiation condition at infinity is frequently required in the numerical simulation of wave propagation in an unbounded domain. In a frequency domain analysis using finite elements, this boundary condition can be represented by the dynamic stiffness matrix of the unbounded domain defined on its boundary. A method for determining a Padé series of the dynamic stiffness matrix is proposed in this paper. This method starts from the scaled boundary finite‐element equation, which is a system of ordinary differential equations obtained by discretizing the boundary only. The coefficients of the Padé series are obtained directly from the ordinary differential equations, which are not actually solved for the dynamic stiffness matrix. The high rate of convergence of the Padé series with increasing order is demonstrated numerically. This technique is applicable to scalar waves and elastic vector waves propagating in anisotropic unbounded domains of irregular geometry. It can be combined seamlessly with standard finite elements. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stochastic spline fictitious boundary element method in elastostatic problems with random fields

Mathematical formulation and computational implementation of the stochastic spline fictitious boundary element method (SFBEM) are presented for the analysis of plane elasticity problems with material parameters modeled with random fields. Two sets of governing differential equations with respect to the means and deviations of structural responses are derived by including the first order terms of deviations. These equations, being in similar forms to those of deterministic elastostatic problems, can be solved using deterministic fundamental solutions. The calculation is conducted with SFBEM, a modified indirect boundary element method (IBEM), resulting in the means and covariances of responses. The proposed method is validated by comparing the solutions obtained with Monte Carlo simulation for a number of example problems and a good agreement of results is observed.     

A Microstructure-based Simulation Environment on the Basis of an Interface Enhanced Particle Model

The present contribution introduces enhanced discrete element simulation methodologies (DEM) with a special focus on a microstructure-based model environment. Therewith, it is possible to represent the failure of cohesive granular materials like concrete, ceramics or marl in a qualitative as well as quantitative manner. Starting from a basic polygonal two-dimensional particle model for non-cohesive granular materials, more complex models for cohesive materials are obtained by inclusion of beam or interface elements between corresponding particles. In particular, we will introduce an interface enhanced DEM methodology where a standard ingredient of computational mechanics, namely interface elements, are combined with the particle methodology contained in the DEM. The last step in the series of increasing complexity is the realization of a microstructure-based simulation environment which utilizes the interface enhanced DEM methodology. With growing model complexity a wide variety of failure features of cohesive as well as non-cohesive geomaterials can be represented. Finally, the plan of the paper is enriched by the validation of the newly introduced and re-developed discrete models with regard to qualitative and quantitative aspects.     

Analysis of the particle collision behavior in spiral jet milling

Collision behaviors of particles in spiral jet milling were analyzed by using a simulation. The motion of the particles was tracked by the discrete element method (DEM), and the air flow was represented by the computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The DEM was coupled with the CFD by a one-way coupling method. The simulated air flow was validated by comparing the fluid velocity field with the measured one in a model experiment. Furthermore, the air flow and particle behaviors in a spiral jet mill used commercially were analyzed by using the simulation. As a result, the particles with a region balancing between centrifugal and radial drag forces could be mainly ground by the high-speed collisions between the particles circulating near the top and bottom walls of the grinding chamber.     

A wall boundary treatment using analytical volume integrations in a particle method

Numerical treatment of complicated wall geometry has been one of the most important challenges in particle methods for computational fluid dynamics. In this study, a novel wall boundary treatment using analytical volume integrations has been developed for two-dimensional (2D) incompressible flow simulations with the moving particle semi-implicit method. In our approach, wall geometry is represented by a set of line segments in 2D space. Thus, arbitrary-shaped boundaries can easily be handled without auxiliary boundary particles. The wall's contributions to the spatial derivatives as well as the particle number density are formulated based on volume integrations over the solid domain. These volume integrations are analytically solved. Therefore, it does not entail an expensive calculation cost nor compromise accuracy. Numerical simulations have been carried out for several test cases including the plane Poiseuille flow, a hydrostatic pressure problem with complicated shape, a high viscous flow driven by a rotating screw, a free-surface flow driven by a rotating cylinder and a dam break in a tank with a wedge. The results obtained using the proposed method agreed well with analytical solutions, experimental observations or calculation results obtained using finite volume method (FVM), which confirms that the proposed wall boundary treatment is accurate and robust.     

Influence of boundary condition on the sound velocity in granular assembly: Spiral tube versus cylinder

The properties of elastic wave propagation in granular assemblies have become a subject of immense interest in recent years, however, the influence of different confinements on the sound velocity is seldom investigated. This study provides a method to determine the contact point between spherical, super-ellipsoidal particles and complex boundaries, in order to investigate how the anisotropy induced by particle shape or boundary affects velocity. Taking cylinder and spiral tube confinements as examples, the falling process of spherical and super-ellipsoidal assemblies are simulated to verify the validation by the discrete element method (DEM). The convergence of the kinetic energy during the falling process and the equilibrium state with zero residual kinetic energy guarantees the stability and correctness. On the basis, elastic wave propagation of spherical and super-ellipsoidal systems in spiral tube and cylindrical confinements under different pressures are modelled, and sound velocities are calculated. The effective medium theory (EMT), granular solid hydrodynamics (GSH), and elastic stiffness are used to interpret the relationship between velocity and stress in cylindrical confinement. However, the results in the spiral tube deviate from EMT and GSH, which means the boundary affects velocity significantly. The difference of velocity between spiral tube and cylinder is qualitatively explained from the perspective of anisotropy of contact force distribution in the system. The simulation results show that anisotropy introduced by the curved surface affects the acoustic properties greatly. The method used for spiral boundary is also suitable for other complicated confinements.     

A boundary density evolutionary topology optimization of continuum structures with smooth boundaries

Based on the variable density method, this article proposes a boundary density evolutionary topology optimization method. The method uses a material interpolation model without penalization. Combined with the density grading filtering method, an optimal topology with only 0/1 cells can be obtained. Compared with the solid isotropic microstructures with penalization method (SIMP), no penalty factor is required in the material interpolation model; compared with the evolutionary structural optimization method (ESO), intermediate-density elements are allowed in the optimization process, but the concept of gradually removing the low-utilization materials near the boundary in the ESO method is retained. After the optimal result is obtained, the structural boundary element is processed by the level set of nodal strain energy, and the optimization result with smooth boundaries similar to the level set method (LSM) can be obtained. The proposed method has the superiority of the variable density method, and it also combines the advantages of the evolutionary method and the level set method, so which is named as boundary density evolution (BDE) method. The four static and one dynamic optimization examples illustrate the stability and efficiency of the proposed method.     

An improved immersed moving boundary for hydrodynamic force calculation in lattice Boltzmann method

Particles suspension is considerably prevalent in petroleum industry and chemical engineering. The efficient and accurate simulation of such a process is always a challenge for both the traditional computational fluid dynamics and lattice Boltzmann method. Immersed moving boundary (IMB) method is promising to resolve this issue by introducing a particle-fluid interaction term in the standard lattice Boltzmann equation, which allows for the smooth hydrodynamic force calculation even for a large grid size relative to the solid particle. Although the IMB method was proved good for stationary particles, the deviation of hydrodynamic force on moving particles exists. In this work, we reveal the physical origin of this problem first and figure out that the internal fluid effect on the hydrodynamic force calculation is not counted in the previous IMB. An improved immersed moving boundary method is therefore proposed by considering the internal fluid correction, which is easy to implement with the little extra computation cost. A 2D single elliptical particle and a 3D sphere sedimentation in Newtonian fluid is simulated directly for the validation of the corrected model by excellent agreements with the standard data.     

基于GPU并行的锥体导管架平台结构冰激振动DEM-FEM耦合分析

该文为分析海冰与锥体海洋平台的相互作用,采用离散元（DEM）-有限元（FEM）耦合方法建立冰激海洋平台结构的耦合模型。通过具有粘结-破碎性能的球体离散单元对海冰的漂移及破碎现象进行计算,海洋平台锥体部分采用平板型壳单元构造,其整体构架及锥体内部的加劲肋采用梁单元构造,即建立壳单元与梁单元组合的锥体海洋平台有限元模型。为提高DEM-FEM耦合算法的计算规模和效率,发展了离散单元与平板型壳单元接触算法及GPU并行环境下参数传递算法。基于此耦合模型分别讨论了平台结构的冰载荷、冰激振动以及锥体应力分布,并与相关实测数据进行对比,为寒区锥体海洋平台的结构设计提供有益的参考。     

Combined three‐dimensional lattice Boltzmann method and discrete element method for modelling fluid–particle interactions with experimental assessment

A general algorithmic framework is established in this paper for numerical simulations of three‐dimensional fluid–particle interaction problems with a large number of moving particles in turbulent flows using a combined lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) and discrete element method (DEM). In this approach, the fluid field is solved by the extended three‐dimensional LBM with the incorporation of the Smagorinsky turbulence model, while particle interactions are modelled by the DEM. The hydrodynamic interactions between fluid and particles are realized through the extension of an existing two‐dimensional fluid–particle hydrodynamic interaction scheme. The main computational aspects comprise the lattice Boltzmann formulation for the solution of fluid flows, the incorporation of a large eddy simulation‐based turbulence model within the framework of the three‐dimensional LBM for turbulent flows, the moving boundary condition for hydrodynamic interactions between fluid and moving particles, and the discrete element modelling of particle‐particle interactions. To assess the solution accuracy of the proposed approach, a much simplified laboratory model of vacuum dredging systems for mineral recovery is employed. The numerical results are compared with the experimental data available. It shows that the overall correspondence between numerical results and experimental measurements is good and thus indicates, to a certain extent, the solution accuracy of the proposed methodology. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于快速多极子边界元法的齿轮箱声场分析

齿轮箱是广泛应用的工程机械零部件,准确地模拟其辐射声场对后续的降噪优化设计有着重要作用。边界元方法非常适合分析此类无限域下的声辐射问题。但传统边界元方法有着计算效率低、内存占用高的缺点。该研究发展了宽频的快速多极子边界元方法,并运用该方法计算了齿轮箱在特定频率下的场点声压以及辐射声场。通过对比商用软件的分析结果,验证了所提快速边界元方法的准确性。此外,运用多核并行计算方法,对计算量较大的扫频分析进行加速计算,最终快速、准确地获取了齿轮箱辐射声场的扫频结果。     

Imposing Dirichlet boundary conditions in hierarchical Cartesian meshes by means of stabilized Lagrange multipliers

The use of Cartesian meshes independent of the geometry has some advantages over the traditional meshes used in the finite element method. The main advantage is that their use together with an appropriate hierarchical data structure reduces the computational cost of the finite element analysis. This improvement is based on the substitution of the traditional mesh generation process by an optimized procedure for intersecting the Cartesian mesh with the boundary of the domain and the use efficient solvers based on the hierarchical data structure. One major difficulty associated to the use of Cartesian grids is the fact that the mesh nodes do not, in general, lie over the boundary of the domain, increasing the difficulty to impose Dirichlet boundary conditions. In this paper, Dirichlet boundary conditions are imposed by means of the Lagrange multipliers technique. A new functional has been added to the initial formulation of the problem that has the effect of stabilizing the problem. The technique here presented allows for a simple definition of the Lagrange multipliers field that even allow us to directly condense the degrees of freedom of the Lagrange multipliers at element level. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The traction boundary contour method for linear elasticity

This paper presents a further development of the boundary contour method. The boundary contour method is extended to cover the traction boundary integral equation. A traction boundary contour method is proposed for linear elastostatics. The formulation of traction boundary contour method is regular for points except the ends of the boundary element and corners. The present approach only requires line integrals for three‐dimensional problems and function evaluations at the ends of boundary elements for two‐dimensional cases. The implementation of the traction boundary contour method with quadratic boundary elements is presented for two‐dimensional problems. Numerical results are given for some two‐dimensional examples, and these are compared with analytical solutions. This method is shown to give excellent results for illustrative examples. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An h‐hierarchical adaptive procedure for the scaled boundary finite‐element method

The scaled boundary finite‐element method (a novel semi‐analytical method for solving linear partial differential equations) involves the solution of a quadratic eigenproblem, the computational expense of which rises rapidly as the number of degrees of freedom increases. Consequently, it is desirable to use the minimum number of degrees of freedom necessary to achieve the accuracy desired. Stress recovery and error estimation techniques for the method have recently been developed. This paper describes an h‐hierarchical adaptive procedure for the scaled boundary finite‐element method. To allow full advantage to be taken of the ability of the scaled boundary finite‐element method to model stress singularities at the scaling centre, and to avoid discretization of certain adjacent segments of the boundary, a sub‐structuring technique is used. The effectiveness of the procedure is demonstrated through a set of examples. The procedure is compared with a similar h‐hierarchical finite element procedure. Since the error estimators in both cases evaluate the energy norm of the stress error, the computational cost of solutions of similar overall accuracy can be compared directly. The examples include the first reported direct comparison of the computational efficiency of the scaled boundary finite‐element method and the finite element method. The scaled boundary finite‐element method is found to reduce the computational effort considerably. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Improvement of pressure distribution to arbitrary geometry with boundary condition represented by polygons in particle method

The boundary condition represented by polygons in the moving particle semi‐implicit method can accurately represent geometries and treat complex geometry with high efficiency. However, inaccurate wall contribution to the Poisson's equation leads to drastic numerical oscillation. To address this issue, in this research, we analyzed the problems of the Poisson's equation used in the boundary condition represented by polygons. The new Poisson's equation is proposed based on the improved source term (Tanaka and Masunaga, Trans Jpn Soc Comput Eng Sci, 2008). The asymmetric gradient model (Khayyer and Gotoh, Coastal Engineering Journal, 2008) is also adopted to further suppress the numerical oscillation of fluid particles. The proposed method can dramatically improve the pressure distribution to arbitrary geometry in three dimensions and keep the efficiency. Four examples including the hydrostatic simulation, dam break simulation, and two complex geometries are verified to show the general applicability of the proposed method. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.