Development of a coupled discrete element (DEM)-smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulation method for polyhedral particles

In the present paper, the direct coupling of a discrete element method (DEM) with polyhedral particles and smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) is presented. The two simulation techniques are fully coupled in both ways through interaction forces between the solid DEM particles and the fluid SPH particles. Thus this simulation method provides the possibility to simulate the individual movement of polyhedral, sharp-edged particles as well as the flow field around these particles in fluid-saturated granular matter which occurs in many technical processes e.g. wire sawing, grinding or lapping. The coupled method is exemplified and validated by the simulation of a particle in a shear flow, which shows good agreement with analytical solutions.