Efficient and Accurate Collision Detection for Granular Flow Simulation

✍ Scribed by B.C. Vemuri; L. Chen; L. Vu-Quoc; X. Zhang; O. Walton

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 440 KB
• Volume: 60
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1077-3169
• DOI: 10.1006/gmip.1998.0479

✦ Synopsis

In this paper, we present efficient algorithms for contact detection and accurate contact mechanics in granular flow simulations. The contact detection algorithms that we present are applicable to arbitrarily shaped rigid particles in a variety of environments including interactive as well as non-interactive. We present a very accurate force displacement model for characterizing the behavior of particles in contact. These algorithms are applied to granular flow simulations, in particular, soybean flow through an inclined chute. There are two phases of this research, namely, the development of contact detection algorithms and the development of accurate contact mechanics based force-displacement models. In the first phase, the algorithms consist of two stages. The first stage involves finding candidate particles for possible contacts. The second stage involves detecting precise contact between these candidates. In our application, the soybeans, which are approximately ellipsoidal in shape, are well approximated by a cluster of overlapping spheres. Detecting precise contact between spherical shapes is quite simple and hence, in this paper, we will focus only 403