Granular materials, can be simulated by the discrete element method (DEM). In DEM particles are considered rigid and the only flexibility present in the model is local and formulated for the contacting points. Such treatment might not be adequate when the general flexibility of particles needs to be considered in granular media. In this contribution, we propose a method that introduces flexible particles of general polyhedral shape within the DEM context. In detail, the virtual element method (VEM) is used for the spatial discretization of particles. It allows the discretization of such polyhedra using only one single element with polyhedral shape. Contact between polyhedral particles, which can be non-convex, is addressed by a special master-to-master contact technique. Furthermore, a barrier-based interface law enforces the contact constraints. Examples include studies of systems of flexible polyhedral particles employed to model a sand-material.
10th European Conference on Numerical Methods in Geotechnical Engineering (NUMGE2023)
2. Finite element, finite difference, discrete element, material point and other methods