A new contact detection method for arbitrary dilated polyhedra with potential function in discrete element method

Contact detection significantly affects the computational efficiency of discrete element simulations, especially for irregularly shaped elements. The dilated polyhedron is constructed by the Minkowski sum of a dilated sphere and a core convex polyhedron. One of the greatest advantages of using the dilated polyhedron in contact detection lies in its ability to be solved by calculating the nearest distance between corresponding core polyhedra. The approximate envelope function (AEF) of a dilated polyhedron is formed by the weighted summation of the second-order dilated function of the polyhedral and spherical functions. The AEF can be used to represent the element in the optimization model for the contact center. Geometric calculations are then employed for the contact points on the core polyhedron, whereupon the contact detection is solved. The accuracy and stability of the proposed method by a 3-D Voronoi tessellation are validated using analytical solutions and previously published simulation results. The efficiency tests show that the speedup of the CPU-based multithread algorithm can reach 14 on a desktop. The direct shear test of the Voronoi shaped ballast is analyzed by this method. The shear stress under different vertical pressure is compared with previously published experimental and simulated results.