GENERATION OF GRANULAR MEDIA

A discrete reduced distance method to generate 2-D and 3-D granular po rous media is presented. The main property of the method is to produce heterogeneous and/or anisotropic packed beds of joined grains with ar bitrary shapes and optimum fitting (i.e., minimum porosity). The itera tive generation process starts with the coarsest grain and adjusts the size and location of the next ones depending on the updated available space. Hence, grain size distribution cannot be specified directly bu t is merely the consequence of user defined input parameters. The latt er consists of a set of randomly distributed initial points, a few typ ical predefined grain shapes as well as the minimum and maximum grain diameters. The simulated granular media can readily be processed by an appropriate mesh generator to allow for subsequent numerical solution s of differential equations.