Application of micro computed tomography for adjustment of model parameters for discrete element method

Nowadays the Discrete Element Method (DEM) is widely applied for the numerical simulation of granular materials. However, for the effective application of DEM detailed information about material properties is needed. Some material parameters of individual particles can be directly measured using various experimental set-ups like shear cell, compression tester, electron microscopy, etc. Nevertheless, in the majority of cases such measurements do not suffice to get overall information about the material. Therefore, various macroscopic experiments like determination of static or dynamic angle of repose are often used to validate DEM simulations and to adjust model parameters. In this contribution, an alternative non-intrusive technique for the estimation of unknown parameters, which is based on particle tracking in sets of the micro computed tomography images, is proposed. In comparison to other methods this technique allows to obtain detailed information about particle motion inside the granular material and does not only rely on the surface properties. In the presented contribution experiments and simulation studies were performed using a cylindrical mixer apparatus filled with polyethylene microspheres. Based on the analysis of obtained images, the exact 3D-positions of all particles in the mixing volume were determined and extracted. For numerical calculations the DEM implemented into component-based simulation framework MUSEN was used.

More Funding Information

DFG BR 1151/4-3,AU 321/2-3,DO 2026/1-1,AU 321/8-1,HE 4526/7

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Application of micro computed tomography for adjustment of model parameters for discrete element method