Large-scale Discrete Element Simulations
[News vom: 10.03.2010]
The pharmaceutical and chemical industry has to handle granular media
like lactose powder or alumina particles in complex engineering
processes. Whilst blending and mixing industrial powder flows often
incorporate billions of particles in large vessels or millions of
tablets in coating devices.
In order to get a better understanding
of granular flows numerical simulations are applied. We are using the
Discrete Element Method (DEM). There particles are (still) modeled as
spheres and their translational and rotational motion are computed due
to exerting forces on inter-particle contacts. In the DEM algorithm all
particles scan for their neighbors independently. This allows for
parallelization. By using cutting edge Nvidia/CUDA technology our
unique DEM code can include up to 10 million particles in a simulation.
Intelligent software design enables for the million particle range at
fast execution speed (one minute process time in less than one day).
This cannot be achieved on regular multi core CPU machines or clusters.
In
our research projects we are focus in complex pharmaceutical processes.
Often the spraying of liquids and air flow is involved in
pharmaceutical production processes. Therefore the DEM has to undergo
suitable extensions in order to capture such features. Numerical
simulations allowing for preparation of lab-scale designs and helps to
predict product properties.
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