A PARALLEL GPU IMPLEMENTATION OF THE ABSOLUTE NODAL COORDINATE FORMULATION WITH A FRICTIONAL/CONTACT MODEL FOR THE SIMULATION OF LARGE FLEXIBLE BODY SYSTEMS

This contribution discusses how a flexible body formalism, specifically, the Absolute Nodal Coordinate Formulation (ANCF), is combined with a frictional/contact model using the Discrete Element Method (DEM) to address many-body dynamics problems; i.e., problems with hundreds of thousands of rigid and deformable bodies. Since the computational effort associated with these problems is significant, the analytical framework is implemented to leverage the computational power available on today’s commodity Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) cards. The code developed is validated against ANSYS and FEAP results. The resulting simulation capability is demonstrated in conjunction with hair simulation. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND - ANCF For almost a decade the Absolute Nodal Coordinate formulation (ANCF) has been widely used to carry out the dynamics analysis of flexible bodies that undergo large rotation and large deformation. This formulation is consistent with the nonlinear theory of continuum mechanics and easy to implement. Also, it leads to a constant mass matrix which makes it computationally more efficient compared to other nonlinear finite element formulations.

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