CONTACT DETECTION ALGORITHMS FOR 3-DIMENSIONAL ELLIPSOIDS IN DISCRETEELEMENT MODELING

Using arrays of ellipsoidal particles in the Discrete Element Method ( DEM) is one of the means to enhance simulations of granular materials. A major challenge in implementing ellipsoidal element to DEM is the d evelopment of an efficient and stable contact detection algorithm in o rder to properly detect contact formation and compute contact forces o n the elements. In view of the current available methods in two-dimens ional (2D) condition, two different contact detection algorithms for e llipsoidal particles in 3D modelling are identified. Their accuracy an d efficiency are compared and the results favour the algorithm based o n the geometric potential concept. This algorithm has been implemented in the recently developed DEM code ELLIPSE3D.