Rigid Clumps in the MercuryDPM Particle Dynamics Code

TL;DR

This paper introduces an efficient implementation of rigid clumps of spherical particles in the MercuryDPM code, enabling better approximation of nonspherical shapes in particle simulations.

Contribution

The work details the integration of clumps into MercuryDPM, including algorithms and tools, to improve nonspherical particle modeling in discrete simulations.

Findings

Efficient contact detection for polydisperse systems

Successful approximation of complex shapes with multilevel clumps

Enhanced simulation capabilities demonstrated through examples

Abstract

Discrete particle simulations have become the standard in science and industrial applications exploring the properties of particulate systems. Most of such simulations rely on the concept of interacting spherical particles to describe the properties of particulates, although, the correct representation of the nonspherical particle shape is crucial for a number of applications. In this work we describe the implementation of clumps, i.e. assemblies of rigidly connected spherical particles, which can approximate given nonspherical shapes, within the \textit{MercuryDPM} particle dynamics code. \textit{MercuryDPM} contact detection algorithm is particularly efficient for polydisperse particle systems, which is essential for multilevel clumps approximating complex surfaces. We employ the existing open-source \texttt{CLUMP} library to generate clump particles. We detail the pre-processing tools providing necessary initial data, as well as the necessary adjustments of the algorithms of contact detection, collision/migration and numerical time integration. The capabilities of our implementation are illustrated for a variety of examples.