User defined particle distribution

Kiran Purushothama Keshavan
Kiran Purushothama Keshavan Altair Community Member
edited April 10 in Community Q&A

Hi,

I have a data set for particle size and number of particles of that particular size, I know I can use the user defined particle distribution but I think it would be great if could tell me if there are tutorials to understand how it actally works. I do not quite get the idea of the scaling part of the procedure.
I have attached the data I have in the attachment.

Thanks,
Kiran

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Answers

  • Stephen Cole
    Stephen Cole
    Altair Employee
    edited April 10

    Hi Kiran,


    We have a tutorial where the imported PSD is used

    EDEM Rock Box Tutorial

    and there is some documentation here:

    https://help.altair.com/edem/Creator/Bulk_Material/Setting_A_Size_Distrib.htm

     

    The concept is that the particle you define in the EDEM Creator > Bulk Materials tab is the 'particle prototype', this has properties which include name, shape and size.  

    When you are specifying a size distribution, any type of distribution, it is always a scale of this prototype. 

    So in your case you need to define the shape and size of the prototype, for me I prefer this to be the smallest particle in the simulation but you could set it as the mean or max or just a round number for the size.  From that point you would need to convert your 'average diameter' to a scale factor.  

    EDEM has 'scale by radius' and 'scale by volume' which increase the radius (linear dimensions) by the same amount or increases the volume, which increases the radius by 'volume scale'^(1/3)

    For example if you had a sphere of diameter 1 mm and chose scale by radius (linear) = 2 then it would create 2 mm spheres.  If you chose scale by volume (cubic) 2 then it would create particles of 2x volume which is the same as increasing the radius by 1.26x.

    Given you have average diameter scale by radius is the easiest, just divide your average diameter by your particle prototype diameter to get the scale factor and include the % of overall mass that you want this size to generate, this can then be imported as 2 columns to the user defined distribution.


    Regards

    Stephen

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