An efficient algorithm for detecting particle contact in non-uniform size particulate system--颗粒学报PARTICUOLOGY

Lu, L., Gu, Z., Lei, K., Wang, S., & Kase, K. (2010). An efficient algorithm for detecting particle contact in non-uniform size particulate system. Particuology, 8(2), 127-132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.partic.2009.09.008

An efficient algorithm for detecting particle contact in non-uniform size particulate system

Luyi Lu ^{a b}, Zhaolin Gu ^a *, Kangbin Lei ^{a b}, Sheng Wang ^b, Kiwamu Kase ^b

a School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
b VCAD Modeling Team, VCAD System Research Program, RIKEN 351-0198, Japan

10.1016/j.partic.2009.09.008

Volume 8, Issue 2, April 2010, Pages 127-132

Received 16 December 2008, Accepted 25 September 2009, Available online 12 January 2010.

E-mail: guzhaoln@mail.xjtu.edu.cn

Highlights

Abstract

Algorithms for detecting particle collision play an important role in the discrete element method (DEM) for the simulation of granular flow systems since the time taken to detect the contact pairs usually occupies a considerable proportion of the total CPU time for the simulation. In this study, we developed a new octree algorithm called multi-octree algorithm, for detecting candidate contact pairs. The so-called multi-octree algorithm adopts the topology of octree for detecting possible contacts, in which the particles are managed by hierarchical classification according to particle size and then mapped to different level nodes of an octree, instead of mapping all particles into the leaf nodes of an octree in Vemuri-octree algorithm. The present algorithm speeds up the detecting process by reducing the number of candidate particles for possible contacts. A non-uniform size particulate system with three particle sizes was simulated by the multi-octree and the Vemuri-octree algorithms simultaneously. The simulation results showed that the multi-octree algorithm is relatively insensitive to the volumetric fraction of particles and particle shapes, and takes much shorter time to find candidate particles for possible contacts than the Vemuri-octree algorithm for non-uniform size particulate systems.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Particle collision; Non-uniform size particles; Octree

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