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The use of the Discrete Element Method to model engineering structures implementing granular materials has proven to be an ecient method to response under various behaviour conditions. However, the computational cost of the simulations increases rapidly, as the number of particles and particle shape complexity increases. An aordable solution to render problems computationally tractable is to use graphical processing units (GPU) for computing. Modern GPUs oer up 10496 compute cores, which allows for a greater parallelisation relative to 32-cores oered by high-end Central Processing Unit (CPU) compute. This study outlines the application of BlazeDEM-GPU, using an RTX 2080Ti GPU (4352 cores), to investigate the influence of the modelling of particle shape on the lateral pull behaviour of granular ballast systems used in railway applications.
The idea is to validate the model and show the benefits of simulating non-spherical shapes in future large-scale tests. The algorithm, created to generate the shape of the ballast based on real grain scans, and using polyhedral shape approximations of varying degrees of complexity is shown. The particle size is modelled to scale. A preliminary investigation of the effect of the grain shape is conducted, where a sleeper lateral pull test is carried out in a spherical grains sample, and various polyhedral grains samples.
Results show that elementary polyhedral shape representations recreate some of the characteristic responses in the lateral pull test,
such as stick/slip phenomena and force chain distributions, which looks promising for future works on railway simulations.
These responses cannot be recreated with simple spherical grains, even when heuristics are added, which requires additional calibration and approximations.
The significant reduction in time when using non-spherical grains also implies that larger granular systems can be investigated.

Powders &amp; Grains 2021

Modelling realistic ballast shape to study the lateral pull behaviour using GPU computing

[EPJ Web of Conferences, Volume 249 (2021)](https://www.epj-conferences.org/articles/epjconf/abs/2021/03/contents/contents.html)

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Powders & Grains 2021

Powders & Grains 2021 will be held in Buenos Aires (Argentina, VIRTUAL) July 5, 13, 21, 29 and Aug 6, 2021. The aim of the conference is to give an up-to-date picture of the broad research field of granular media, powders and grains. Contributions from experts around the world will focus on research topics that cover a wide range of open problems in the field.

technical paper

Currently, very little is known about reliable phenomelogical correlations to estimate the gravity-driven mass flow rate, of dry non-cohesive granular material, outflowing from thin thickness slots in vertical sidewalls of rectangular silos. Here, we validate a simple and general formula that fits pretty well data published elsewhere, including the cases of vertically and horizontally elongated slots.

Granular flow through vertical slots: analysis of a general formula

For homogeneous systems like classical fluid dynamics and structural mechanics, finite element method (FEM) grid generation has reached a mature state. On the other hand, for multi-physics-problems like fluids with a high density of immersed particles, many researchers may not even be aware of the types of instabilities which may be triggered by unsuitable meshes. We review common types of grid generation, point out previously unrecognised types of instabilities for particles in fluids as well as remedies to obtain particle-fluid simulations with higher stability and fewer redundant degrees of freedom.

Grid-algorithm improvements for dense suspensions of discrete element particles in finite element fluid simulations

Discrete element modelling (DEM) is widely used to simulate granular systems, nowadays routinely on graphical processing units. Graphics processing units (GPUs) are inherently designed for parallel computation, and recent advances in the architecture, compiler design and language development are allowing general-purpose computation to be computed on multiple GPUs. Application of DEM to bonded particle systems are much less common, with a number of open research questions remaining. This study outlines a Bonded-Particle Research DEM Framework, PyBONDEM-GPU, written in Python. This framework leverages the parallel nature of GPUs for computational speed-up and the rapid prototype flexibility of Python. Python is faster and easier to learn than classical compiled languages, making computational simulation development accessible to undergraduate and graduate engineers. PyBONDEM-GPU leverages the Numba-CUDA module to compile Python syntax for execution on GPUs. The framework enables research of fibre pull-out from fibre-matrix embeddings. Bonds are simulated between all interacting particles. The performance of PyBONDEM-GPU is compared against Python CPU implementations of PyBONDEM using the Numpy and Numba-CPU Python modules. PyBONDEM-GPU was found to be 1000 times faster than the Numpy implementation and 4 times faster than the Numba-CPU implementation to resolve forces and to integrate the equations of motion.

PyBONDEM-GPU: a discrete element bonded particle Python research framework – Development and examples

Passages of people or cattle through narrow entrances or exits occur in manifold situations. They are difficult to study experimentally, because one has to carefully separate objective, physical parameters from subjective, individual motivations, manners and temperament. Mechanically excited physical model systems can help to discriminate some of these classes of parameters. We characterize active and passive particles of equal shape and mass on a vibrating plate and study their bottleneck passage dynamics. They show fundamentally different scaling behavior.

Mechanically driven active and passive grains as models for egress dynamics

The present paper describes laboratory tests on steady granular flows down a smooth chute using X-ray radiography. By using an original granular chute set-up with a gate at its end, standing discontinuites in height, velocity and density, namely jumps, were produced during the granular flows. The X-ray radiography was successful to get consistent measurements of the free-surface and density profiles of the flows along the chute under different flow states: the (nearly) uniform flows before the jumps, the gradually-varied flows after the jumps, and the highly non-uniform flows across the jumps. This demonstrates the efficiency of the X-ray radiography to measure granular flows.

Measuring jumps during granular chute-flows using X-ray radiography

Magnetic forces are used to heat up thousands of spherical particles under low-gravity. This longrange external excitation, combined with the induced particle-particle interactions, results in a homogeneousspatial distribution of the particles. Comparisons with predictions of kinetic theories can hence be carried out.Haff’s cooling law is verified qualitatively, while the measured cooling time scale is quantitatively differentfrom the prediction. The high velocity tail of the velocity distribution during homogeneous cooling state (HCS)is measured, while the expected cluster formation after HCS can not be verified by our experiment.

Magnetically heated granular gas in a low-gravity environment

The transport of a colouring solute, driven by the buoyant displacement of microscopic suspended particles, and in the absence of net flow, is studied experimentally in a Hele Shaw cell. Initially, a sharp interface between a transparent fluid without particles and an underlying coloured suspension is obtained. From this situation, the suspended particles rise, carrying the solute in the form of a fingering instability across the interface, where a light transmission technique is used to measure the local solute concentration. This one attains an asymptotic value that increases with the solid fraction ϕ of suspended particles, and decreases with the distance to the interface. The solute mass discharge also increases with ϕ, always being relatively small (< 3%). The onset and development of the instability as the mechanism driving the transport of the solute is discussed.

Solute transport by suspended buoyant particles

The ability to predict thermal-induced stresses in granular materials is of practical importance across a range of disciplines ranging from process engineering to geotechnical engineering. This study presents an analytical formula to predict thermal-induced stress increments in mono-disperse granular materials subject to an initial isotropic stress state. A complementary series of DEM simulations were carried out to explore the applicability of the proposed analytical formula. The comparative analysis showed that the proposed expression can accurately predict stress changes in packings where there are negligible particle displacements as a consequence of the thermal loading (e.g. regular packings and medium/dense random packings); however large errors were observed in loose samples with a random packing.

Analytical and DEM studies of thermal stress in granular materials

In this presentation a general concept of frictional heat and the associated rise in contact temperature is discussed, the theoretical/analytical models for predicting the rise in contact temperature are presented. Similarly, a finite element method model is discussed. Results for a maximum contact temperature for a friction slide between two spherical particles show that the TK model predictions are in good agreement with the Finite element analysis.

Friction-induced heat generation between two particles

The objective of this work was to measure the coefficient of restitution of fine granite sand dust (passing sieve ASTM N°30) and to study its influence on the prediction of classification parameters in an elutriator device. Three types of restitution coefficients were evaluated in the computational fluid dynamic model: experimental, elastic, and half the experimental value. The influence of process variables, such as the inclination angle of the equipment and the air inlet velocity, on the efficiency of the obtained fine and coarse fractions was also studied. The results indicate that the coefficient of restitution significantly influences the efficiency parameters calculated for the inclined tests, given the greater contact that exists between the particles and the equipment wall. The experimental value of the coefficient achieved almost total congruence with the coarse fraction collected for the tested velocities. For the vertical tests, the variation of the coefficient did not show significant differences for both collected fractions. The results obtained in this work allowed to gain a deeper insight into the studied gas-solid systems, and to improve the numerical predictions on fine particles classification processes widely used in the ceramic, mining and metallurgical industries.

Modelling realistic ballast shape to study the lateral pull behaviour using GPU computing

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