Contact Force Simulation of Granular Media Using Explicit Finite Element Method

Abstract

Granular flow behavior is of fundamental interest to the engineering and scientific community because of the prevalence of these flows in the pharmaceutical, agricultural, food service, and powder manufacturing industries. When granular media come under external load, inter-particle forces in the granular media form an inhomogeneous distribution. In this study, a simulation of the contact forces in granular media was carried out using an explicit finite element method on a biaxial cell of approximately 2500 particles. Some of the key results included the capturing of normal force and tangential force distributions within a granular shear cell.