DEM Modelling of a Granular Shear Cell
A discrete element method simulation is used to obtain local flow properties of a granular media inside of an anular shear cell. Particles are affixed to the inside wheel of the shear cell that rotates at a constant rate. Contacts between particles and between particles and the boundary resolved by a soft-sphere Hertzian spring-dashpot normal force and a history-based frictional force.
The codebase is 4,000 lines of C code that is parallelized using OpenMP using Verlet lists and a grid data structure for neighbor searching. The post processing code for data processing and visualization is written in Python using OpenGL.
Filter Cake Evolution in Pipe Flow
A relatively simple DEM simulation is used to model filter cake build up in a forced flow against a porous medium in a cylindrical domain. The fluid field is assumed to be fully developed pipe flow solved for analytically (velocity flow field is shown in green below). Particles are affected by the fluid through drag.
The simulations were run using an older version of the DEM code with only spring-dashpot based normal force contact mechanics.