An Efficient 3D FEM - DEM Coupling for Granular Matter Applications

The presented approach is relevant to almost all engineering applications that deal with granular
matter such as off-road tire performance, transport on conveyor belts or displacement of granular material as in mixers or excavation of soil. For all these applications an engineering device is in contact with granular matter which causes responses due to the interaction forces. The proposed Extended Discrete Element Method (XDEM) as a combination of the Discrete Element Method (DEM) and the Finite Element Method (FEM) allows to sufficiently resolve the different domains involved in these engineering applications. Herein the motion of each grain is accounted for individually. Simultaneously, the finite element method accurately predicts the deformations experienced by the engineering device. Thus, the simulation domain occupied by the device is efficiently described as a continuous entity. The coupling of both methods is based on the interface shared by the two spatially separated domains. The interface coupling enables to apply a contact model suited to the particular contact behaviour between the grains and the surface material if the engineering device. In contact, forces develop at the interface and generate an responce in each domain. The coupling method enables to capture both responses simultaneously. Each grain in contact with the device surface generates a contact force to which it reacts repulsively. The contact forces sum up over the surface and cause deformations of device body. It further employs a fast contact detection algorithm to save valuable computation time. This concept is supported by the software tools of the Discrete Particle Method (DPM) and Diffpack. To exemplify the presented method, the tractive performance of different tire treads has been studied on a soil layer of the stony terrian. The simulation results are used to analyse the gross tractive effort, running resistance and drawbar pull of the different tread patterns.