DEM study of mechanical characteristics of multi-spherical and superquadric particles at micro and macro scales

Abstract

Multi-spheres and Superquadrics are popular approaches for addressing particle shape effect in the Discrete Element Method (DEM). This study focuses on the mechanical characteristics of cubical particles, modelled by the two methods (using EDEM and LIGGGHTS), through conducting a series of numerical case studies at both single particle and bulk levels. In the first part of the study, several testing scenarios, which clarify the impact, interlocking, sliding and tilting characteristics of the particle, are discussed and the respective simulations are carried out. The results emphasize the importance of surface bumpiness and edge sharpness in the single-particle behaviour and are used for informing the bulk response. Further, role of the two shape descriptors on bulk response is evaluated in angle of repose, Jenike shear and silo flow simulations. The results of these tests are assessed both at the micro, directly through DEM outputs, and at the meso-and macro-scales, using a coarse graining technique. It is seen that the properties of edge and surface in superquadric and multi-sphere particles considerably influence the heap profile in the angle of repose test. However, in a Jenike direct shear, the shape complexity only significantly affects the shear strength, porosity and mode of motion when the packing is dense. Additionally, in silo discharge, the effect of shape features is even less on the flow pattern and mass flow rate but is found to have a significant influence on the stress distribution.

A multi‐core ready discrete element method with triangles using dynamically adaptive multiscale grids

“…Hopper experiments serve as benchmarks for many DEM codes, since hoppers are used in many industrial workflows. Reasonable particle counts which yield insight on the flow behaviour range from 100, 800, over 3,125 to 6,000 . Experiments with spherical or analytical particle descriptions, which are not the focus of the present paper, in contrast work with 100,000 particles upwards and can even 2·10 9 particles in total with more than 15,000 particles per rank/node .…”

Parameter analysis and wall effect of radiative heat transfer for CFD-DEM simulation in nuclear packed pebble bed

“…6, which are prolate spheroid, oblate spheroid, cylindrical particle, and cubical particle, are applied to study the shape on ( ) g η . The discrete particle simulations are performed by LIGGGHTS (Podlozhnyuk et al, 2017;Soltanbeigi et al, 2018) of the single-particle method. All non-spherical pebbles are of the same volume and the effective diameter is 60 mm.…”

DEM analysis of the effect of particle shape, cohesion and strain rate on powder rheometry

“…Soltanbeigi et al [26] studied the influence of edge sharpness and bumpiness of particles on granular flow and Campbell [21] simulated the simple shear flow of ellipsoidal particles. Si et al [27] evaluated the effect of particle size and cohesion on flow characteristics.…”