2018 Volume 55 Issue 8 Pages 455-460
Nowadays, Discrete Element Method (DEM) is widely used to study the phenomena concerning granular materials or powders or to develop granular facilities and processes. When DEM is used, the spring constant in the contact force model of DEM is often reduced to reduce the calculation time or calculation cost. However, it has been pointed out that the reduction in the spring constant largely changes the agglomeration behavior of cohesive particles. When one uses the technique of reducing spring constant, it is required to understand the physics of particle-particle interaction. In this article, the way of thinking to use the technique of reducing spring constant is presented based on the authors’ previous studies.
