Open AccessA novel approach to investigate the network of granular material using modified 3D DEM simulation
Author(s) -
Fang Q. Hu,
Peng Hu
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
iop conference series. earth and environmental science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1755-1307
pISSN - 1755-1315
DOI - 10.1088/1755-1315/474/7/072037
Subject(s) - discrete element method , granular material , computer science , average path length , cluster analysis , computational science , void ratio , simulation , algorithm , theoretical computer science , shortest path problem , materials science , mechanics , artificial intelligence , physics , graph , composite material
Recently it is increasingly popular to draw upon concepts and tools from the network science to help with the analysis of granular material as this method is perfectly suitable for the granular system and provides new prospective into investigating the micro-macro relationship. However, 2D simulation brings insufficient and unrealistic results while 3D simulation requires huge workloads. It is of great significance to put forward a quick and accurate method to calculate the network-related indexes of a granular material. In this study, a modified open-source discrete element code, YADE is employed to simulate a series of tri-axial compression tests on specimens composed of polydisperse-sized spheres with varying particle diameter. The contact network evolution is studied real time with satisfactory calculation speed under the help of GPU and SQL Server parallel computing. The general evolution pattern of contact network during loading is illustrated from the view of network metrics. The initial void ratio, coordination number together with the clustering coefficient and the average shortest path of the system are shown. Particles with similar size tend to form a looser packing, resulting in smaller shear force and less connectivity of the whole system. The proposed approach is strong at improving the efficiency of the calculation when investigating the contact network of the granular material.