Comparison of a 3-D DEM simulation with MRI data

This paper presents a comparison of a granular material studied experimenta lly and numerically. Simple shear tests were performed inside the magnetic core of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) equipment. Spherical pharmaceutica l pills were used as the granular material, with each pill's centre locatio n determined by MRI. These centre locations in the initial assembly were th en used as the initial configuration in the numerical simulation using the discrete element method. The contact properties between pharmaceutical pill s used in the numerical simulation were obtained experimentally. The numeri cal predication was compared with experimental data at both macroscopic and microscopic levels. Good agreement was found at both levels. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.