Abstract
The present paper deals with flow simulations of granular materials moving inside container using Cellular Automata (CA). CA is a class of computer modeling techniques, which consists of discrete unit elements arranged uniformly on spaces, each of which can vary within a finite set of values to express the physical state of the components of the system. The time of evolution of the element state is performed synchronously according to local neighbor rules, instead of governing equations, taking into account the state of the element itself and its nearby elements. In this study, the damping characteristic of a granular damper is investigated numerically by DEM and also by Cellular Automata model, where a container incorporating granular materials is attached to the mass of one-DOF vibrating system. By discretizing the space inside container and limiting search range of the particle interaction within neighboring site, and also by simplifying the impact dynamics of particles, the proposed CA model can greatly reduce calculation time while keeping computational accuracy as much as those can be obtained by the DEM model.
