Special issue in ChemEngineering Towards More Realism in the Simulation of Granular Materials Guest Editor: Hans-Georg Matuttis The University of Electro-Communications Graduate School of Informatics and Engineering Department of Mechanical and Intelligent Systems Engineering Chofu, Chofugaoka 1-5-1, Tokyo 182-8585, Japan

While the computational power even of single workstations has increased significantly in the last three decades, a large part of Discrete Element Simulations is still performed like in the 1990s. This is partially  due to the fact that publishing novel method and ideas  in the field has become rather difficult. The purpose of this "special issue" is to go beyond standard algorithms in DEM-simulation in various aspects.

 

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Articles on the following topics (not necessarily exhaustive list) would be very welcome for the this special issue:

👉🏽 Simulation Methodologies for realistic particle modeling
DEM-simulation methods for non-spherical particles, improved numerical analysis (better time integration methods for the underlying equations, better computational geometry for overlap computation), comparison of different methodologies (rigid vs. elastic, round vs. non-round particles),

👉🏽 Granular effects
Granular effects have been identified which are not common among other states of matter, in particular shape effects and history effects (effects of construction history, partial mobilization of static friction, "frozen" density distributions which influence macroscopic behavior, effects of shape and friction), investigation of wear  

👉🏽 Particles in Fluids

There are various packages and methodologies which treat particles in fluids, but unfortunately, many publications show "results" without
testing data for the fluid simulation methods. Complex flows with particles in fluids, verification for fluid simulation method (Strouhal numbers and Drag coefficients for FVM-methods and Lattice Boltzmann methods are mostly absent from the literature),

👉🏽 Verifiable Experiments

Comparison between experiments and simulations; Experiments which are well reproducible with DEM simulations, so that parameters (particle shape, inter-particle-friction, particle-friction coefficients) are reported or other effects (cohesion due to high air humidity) are  controlled. Sets of experiments with non-trivial outcomes which could be implemented with DEM-simulations, experimental data on real granular materials (including variations of material parameters)

👉🏽 Methodologies closely related to DEM and couplings to DEM

Cosserat- and Polar continua related to systems accessible to DEM-simulations, Material point methods, coupling between Eulerian and Lagrangian approaches, particle systems under the influence of electrostatic or van der Waals forces