Assessment of the potentials of implicit integration method in discrete element modelling of granular matter

Discrete element method (DEM) is increasingly used to simulate the motion of granular matter in engineering
devices. DEM relies on numerical integration to compute the positions and velocities of particles
in the next time step. Typically, explicit integration methods are utilized in DEM. This paper presents a
systematic assessment of the potentials of implicit integration in DEM. The results show that though the
implicit integration enables larger time steps to be used compared to the common explicit methods, the
overall speed up is overruled by higher computational costs of the implicit method.