2014/10/23 by Nicolas Brodu, Joshua A. Dijksman, Robert Behringer +1 · 48 citations
Engineering · Environmental Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Classical mechanics #Computer science #Contact dynamics #Contact force #Discrete element method #Finite element method #Geotechnical and Geomechanical Engineering #Granular flow and fluidized beds #Granular material #Granular matter #Hard spheres #Landslides and related hazards #Materials science #Mechanics #Physics #SPHERES #Statistical physics #cond-mat.soft #physics.comp-ph
paper · pdf · open access · doi:10.1103/physreve.91.032201
published in Physical Review E 91(3), 032201 (American Physical Society)
arxiv created 2014/10/23 · openalex publication_date 2015/03/02 · arxiv updated 2018/10/22 · openalex created_date 2020/11/23 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
This article presents a new force model for performing quantitative simulations of dense granular materials. Interactions between multiple contacts (MC) on the same grain are explicitly taken into account. Our readily applicable MC-DEM method retains all the advantages of discrete-element method simulations and does not require the use of costly finite-element methods. The new model closely reproduces our recent experimental measurements, including contact force distributions in full 3D, at all compression levels of the packing up to the experimental maximum limit of 13%. Comparisons with classic simulations using the nondeformable spheres approach, as well as with alternative models for interactions between multiple contacts, are provided. The success of our model, compared to these alternatives, demonstrates that interactions between multiple contacts on each grain must be included for dense granular packings.