Improved approximation of arbitrary shapes in dem simulations with multi-spheres

DEM simulations are originally made for spherical particles only. But most of real particles are anything but not spherical. Due to this problem, the multi-sphere method was invented. It provides the possibility to clump several spheres together to create complex shape structures. The proposed algorithm offers a novel method to create multi-sphere clumps for the given arbitrary shapes. Especially the use of modern clustering algorithms, from the field of computational intelligence, achieve satisfactory results. The clustering is embedded into an optimisation algorithm which uses a pre-defined criterion. A mostly unaided algorithm with only a few input and hyperparameters is able to approximate arbitrary shapes

Improved approximation of arbitrary shapes in dem simulations with multi-spheres

DEM simulations are originally made for spherical particles only. But most of real particles are anything but not spherical. Due to this problem, the multi-sphere method was invented. It provides the possibility to clump several spheres together to create complex shape structures. The proposed algorithm offers a novel method to create multi-sphere clumps for the given arbitrary shapes. Especially the use of modern clustering algorithms, from the field of computational intelligence, achieve satisfactory results. The clustering is embedded into an optimisation algorithm which uses a pre-defined criterion. A mostly unaided algorithm with only a few input and hyperparameters is able to approximate arbitrary shapes