Abstract
A Speed-up method for the modeling of magnetic brush in a two-component development system by using Discrete Element Method was proposed in this paper. The effects of cutoff distance for magnetic force between carrier particles on the brush shape and its calculation time was conducted. The number of particles in a brush increased with increasing the cutoff distance and mean number of brushes in a development nip decreased. The magnetic brush became large under relative cutoff distance Lcutoff<5.0 (Lcutoff=Rij/(ri+rj)). Thus, Lcutoff should be more than 5.0. The cutoff distance affected not only shape of magnetic brushes, but also calculation speed. A new calculation method of magnetic force, which was considering only neighboring particles (Rij/(ri+rj)<Ld) at every step, was proposed. It was found that the brush shape under Ld=2.5 was mostly same as that of conventional method. The calculation time of new method was 8.7 times faster than conventional one under Lcutoff=7.0. Therefore, the calculation speed of DEM in the two-component electrophotographic system was improved and the large-scale computing will be possible.
