Discrete Element Method for Engineering

This book is intended as an introduction and reference for industrial application of the DEM. One major topic is to provide insights into gold standards and best practices with regard to DEM modeling of bulk materials. The book covers the most important theoretical aspects of the DEM, puts them into perspective of common modeling approaches and sets out to assist practitioners with educated decision-making in day-to-day DEM simulations. Another major topic is consolidation of DEM, bulk solid test setups and measurement data for calibration purposes. Calibration is a core aspect of industrial DEM usage, but many users are uncertain how to choose a test, how to deal with measurement data, which implications follow from simplifications made and how to obtain a satisfactory DEM parameter set. In the last part of the book, examples for typical applications are illustrated and the DEM modeling considerations are elucidated. All examples in this book are modeled with the open-source DEM software LIGGGHTS, allowing readers to reproduce results and findings with a program that is widely used in industrial settings. The examples are using the publicly available LIGGGHTS-PUBLIC version.