Development of Discrete Element Model and Simulation Method to Predict Granular Flows

Abstract

The Discrete Element Method (DEM), introduced by Cundall and Strack in 1979, gradually spread to the field of powder engineering in the late 1980s. In the 1990s, numerous applications of DEM to the field of powder technology were made, and its usefulness for predicting powder behavior was recognized. Subsequently, in the 2000s and 2010s, with the development of computers and the popularization of general-purpose software, numerical simulation of powder processes became widely adopted in the industrial sector as well. Since the 1980s, the author has been actively involved in discrete particle modeling of solid-gas two-phase flows and the development of DEM-CFD models for numerical analysis of dense gas-solid two-phase flows. This paper describes the development of discrete particle models and simulations conducted by the authors.