Improvement of Discrete Element Simulation Accuracy of Steel Powder Filling Behavior by Optimization of Contact and Friction Parameters

Abstract

The filling behavior of Fe-Ni-Mo steel powder for sintered machine parts is simulated using our original DEM (Discrete Element Method) code based on FDPS (Framework for Developing Particle Simulator). The difference between the simulated and experimental apparent densities after self-weight filling is only -6.7%, which is a significantly higher prediction accuracy than the prior study. This result is obtained by only calculating the repulsive force, viscous damping, friction force and gravity using the actual Young's modulus. This is due to using the experimental friction coefficients and the upper limit setting of the distance between the particle surfaces based on the experimental study. This method can be used to simulate the porosity, especially the low density region, in the actual filling process.