DEM simulations using convex NURBS particles

authored by: Marina Vendl Craveiro, Alfredo Gay Neto, Peter Wriggers
Abstract: Contact detection is one of the most important steps to be handled during numerical simulations of particle systems. It is extremely dependent on particle geometry, which governs the mechanical behavior of systems and the computational cost of simulations. NURBS are an option to model the boundary of particles with nonstandard geometries, here called “NURBS particles”. The contact between NURBS particles, however, is not trivial. The present paper presents a complete contact detection algorithm for convex NURBS particles, which automatically performs a hierarchy of contact searches. It is based on computer graphics and optimization techniques to address local contact. For robustness, specific strategies are implemented to model closed NURBS geometries, indicating the occurrence of local geometric imperfections when using multiple NURBS parameterizations. The main novelty of the work is related to a degeneration of the local contact problem to deal with such imperfections, which allows using general particle geometries. Numerical examples demonstrate the robustness of the proposed algorithm.
Organisation(s): Institute of Continuum Mechanics
External Organisation(s): Universidade de Sao Paulo
Type: Article
Journal: Computational Particle Mechanics
ISSN: 2196-4378
Publication date: 30.11.2023
Publication status: E-pub ahead of print
Peer reviewed: Yes
ASJC Scopus subject areas: Computational Mechanics, Civil and Structural Engineering, Numerical Analysis, Modelling and Simulation, Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes, Computational Mathematics
Electronic version(s): https://doi.org/10.1007/s40571-023-00675-x (Access: Closed)
: Details in the research portal "Research@Leibniz University"

BibTeX

@article{a036de6cc20e47029699f2ebc6a50f35,
title = "DEM simulations using convex NURBS particles",
abstract = "Contact detection is one of the most important steps to be handled during numerical simulations of particle systems. It is extremely dependent on particle geometry, which governs the mechanical behavior of systems and the computational cost of simulations. NURBS are an option to model the boundary of particles with nonstandard geometries, here called “NURBS particles”. The contact between NURBS particles, however, is not trivial. The present paper presents a complete contact detection algorithm for convex NURBS particles, which automatically performs a hierarchy of contact searches. It is based on computer graphics and optimization techniques to address local contact. For robustness, specific strategies are implemented to model closed NURBS geometries, indicating the occurrence of local geometric imperfections when using multiple NURBS parameterizations. The main novelty of the work is related to a degeneration of the local contact problem to deal with such imperfections, which allows using general particle geometries. Numerical examples demonstrate the robustness of the proposed algorithm.",
keywords = "Computer graphics, Contact, Degeneration, Discrete element method, NURBS",
author = "Craveiro, {Marina Vendl} and {Gay Neto}, Alfredo and Peter Wriggers",
note = "Funding Information: This work was funded by CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cient{\'i}fico e Tecnol{\'o}gico) under the research Grant 304321/2021-4. ",
year = "2023",
month = nov,
day = "30",
doi = "10.1007/s40571-023-00675-x",
language = "English",
journal = "Computational Particle Mechanics",
issn = "2196-4378",
publisher = "Springer International Publishing AG",
}