Large‐scale parallel discrete element simulations of granular flow

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present large‐scale parallel direct numerical simulations of granular flow, using a novel, portable software program for discrete element method (DEM) simulations.Design/methodology/approach – Since particle methods provide a unifying framework for both discrete and continuous systems, the program is based on the parallel particle mesh (PPM) library, which has already been demonstrated to provide transparent parallelization and state‐of‐the‐art parallel efficiency using particle methods for continuous systems.Findings – By adapting PPM to discrete systems, results are reported from three‐dimensional simulations of a sand avalanche down an inclined plane.Originality/value – The paper demonstrates the parallel performance and scalability of the new simulation program using up to 122 million particles on 192 processors, employing adaptive domain decomposition and load balancing techniques.

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