Session: MSNDC-03-01 Contact and Interface Dynamics

Paper Number: 74753

Start Time: August 17, 01:00 PM

74753 - Chrono::gpu: A Discrete Element Simulation Package for Granular Dynamics Analysis 

After water, granular material is the second most handled medium in industry. Albeit numerically expensive, the Discrete Element Method (DEM) has been widely-applied to solve the dynamics of granular material by evaluating the interaction among particles. 

DEM embraces the assumption that rigid bodies are allowed to have small deformation at the point of contact. The contact forces are evaluated by localized particle deformation, material properties and particle size, using various contact laws. The evolution of each particle is updated by summing gravity and contact forces, including normal and tangential contact force, cohesion, rolling and spinning frictional torque. 

Traditionally, CPU-based supercomputers are required to perform large-scale simulation of granular material. However, this can be expensive due to large body counts and limitation in memory bandwidth. In this work we will present a physics-based software package, Chrono::Gpu, for simulating granular dynamics leveraging Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). Apart from built-in boundary conditions, the software also supports imported mesh to interact with the granular particles. This module also can interact with other module in Chrono to perform cosimulation. 

The software is validated by a set of benchmark tests, including low-impact crater tests and rotating drum tests, and the results are compared with experimental data. Scaling analysis are carried out to demonstrate a linear scaling of up to 130 million particles. 

Presenting Author: Luning Fang University of Wisconsin-Madison

Authors:

Luning Fang University of Wisconsin-Madison
Ruochun Zhang University of Wisconsin-Madison
Radu Serban University of Wisconsin - Madison
Dan Negrut University of Wisconsin - Madison