Discrete Element Methods for Arbitrarily Shaped Granular Materials

Granular materials consist of a large number of irregularly shaped solid particles that exist widely in nature or in industrial production. The discrete element method (DEM) was proposed by Cundall and Strack, and it is crucial for understanding the macroscopic mechanical behaviors of granular materials in different engineering fields. Traditional DEMs, primarily using three-dimensional spheres, offer computational simplicity but fail to capture the multiple collisions and interlocking of non-spherical granular materials. Meanwhile, large deformations and high-performance computations of granular materials remain difficult for DEM simulations. Therefore, this seminar addresses major challenges in the numerical modeling of arbitrarily shaped granular materials, involving discrete element methods, large deformation algorithms, GPU parallel computing, and applications to granular flows and ship-ice interaction. We also analyze the macroscopic and microscopic mechanical properties of granular materials to accurately understand the underlying physical mechanisms of non-spherical granular flows, providing essential numerical tools and theoretical evidence for the complex mechanical problems of granular materials in different engineering fields.