Highlights

The authors are grateful to many participants of DEM3 with whom much of this material was discussed during the course of the conference. Also special thanks to J.R. Williams, G. Mustoe, C. Thornton, P.W. Cleary, P.A. Cundall, D.R.J. Owen and J. Ghaboussi.

Keywords Particle physics, Modelling

Abstract It is now widely recognised that particle shape plays an important role in the behaviour of grand scale discontinua systems and may be partially responsible for some of the unexplained phenomena of particulate physics. It is therefore very important that a virtual discontinua modelling workbench includes a library comprising a large spectrum of shapes including real-shaped particles of interest to scientists and engineers. In this context a question of selecting a particle from such a library arises. In this paper, a particular selection procedure based on shape selection chart is proposed.

1. Introduction

Formulations of problems of continua are based on what are termed constitutive laws. From the constitutive law and preservation laws a set of governing equations defining the problem is derived. A continuum model is only an approximation of the real physical phenomena and is as good as the underlying assumptions on which it is based. The most important assumption necessary for the validity of the continuum model is the assumption that...