Highlights

The author is grateful to the Australian Research Council (ARC), UNSW and BHP Steel for the financial support, and members at PMP for their contribution to this work in the past years.

Keywords Particle physics, Simulation

Abstract Discrete element method (DEM) has been extensively used in the laboratory of particulate and multiphase processing at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) to study the fundamentals of particulate matter at a particle scale. This paper briefly reviews the work in the laboratory, which covers the development of simulation techniques and their application to the study of particle packing and flow, transport properties and constitutive relationships of typical static or dynamic particulate systems. It is concluded, through representative comparison between simulated and measured results under different conditions, that DEM, as a major technique for discrete particle simulation, is an effective method for particle scale research of particulate matter.

Introduction

Particle science and technology is a rapidly developing interdisciplinary research area with its core being the understanding of the relationships between micro- and macroscopic properties of particulate/granular matter a state of matter that is widely encountered but poorly understood. The macroscopic behaviour of particulate matter is controlled by the interactions between...