What's New in EDEM 2023.1
Altair EmployeeAltair® EDEM™ 2023.1 is now available with lots of exciting new capabilities and improvements. Central to this release is the advanced analysis in the form of Recorded Factories which allows users to split the simulation to run multiple scenarios by reusing the mass flow of the simulation. This will dramatically reduce the time to analyze multiple design configurations and reduce simulation size and computational cost for materials processing applications.
In addition, we have added groundbreaking new physics with the new model for particle-based paste material – the ‘Hydrodynamic Lubrication Model’. This capability is completely unique to EDEM and will take Discrete Element Modeling to new heights for process manufacturing.
Other improvements include the new capabilities for Continuum Analysis and the ability to significantly reduce disk space with the new Runtime Image Generation feature.
Here are some more details of the key highlights from this latest release!
Record and Reuse Particle Flows
Many processes involving the movement of materials from one unit operation to another involve large simulations, which are very expensive to run for the number of design iterations required.
The Recorded Factories capability allows users to split the simulation to run multiple scenarios by reusing the mass flow of the simulation rather than having to run the full simulation each time. For users, this means huge simulation speed improvements and significant time savings in analyzing multiple design configurations. This leads to finding the optimal design much quicker.
In addition, the simulation size and computational cost can be significantly reduced despite the complexity of the flow of material being simulated.
As an example, to optimize a screw auger unloading material onto a slatted conveyor belt for minerals processing application, several design iterations are simulated. By using this new capability, the user can now simulate once the unloading portion and focus the simulation effort on the new designs. This represents a reduction of 50% of the total computational time over 20 design iterations for this case.
Continuum Analysis Improvements
Continuum theory applied to particle-based data creates a powerful way of extracting and visualizing data. By applying temporal and spatial averaging to key particle behaviors, engineers can gain insight into various performance metrics including stress, mass and momentum density, solid fraction, and more.
Our continuum analysis capability is applicable to a range of industry use cases and allows engineers to get even more insight to optimize the performance of their designs and processes.
First introduced in EDEM 2022.1, this capability has been expanded to include materials concentration, user-defined quantities, and allows users to specify continuum analysis per particle type as well as import geometry to the meshes.
This will allow users to perform even greater analysis to drive better decision-making.
New Model for Particle-based Paste Material
To continue the advancements in particle simulation, we have released a groundbreaking new model to simulate the effect of particles as though they were fully saturated in a fluid - the Hydrodynamic Lubrication Model.
This is an extremely important development for engineers using the Discrete Element Method (DEM) as it will allow them to simulate dense suspensions and pastes that are used in battery manufacturing, electronics, pharmaceutical, and other industry applications.
The Hydrodynamic Lubrication Model is unique to EDEM – there is nothing else like this in the DEM market! Users can now model the impacts of fluid on particle behavior and simulate slurries and pastes without the need for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).
Image Generation During Simulation Runtime
Following the success of the Export Data In Runtime in EDEM 2022.3, which allows the export of specific data on higher frequency without the cost of exporting a whole timestep, we are now adding the capability of doing the same with visuals.
Previously, you needed to save an important amount of data and wait for the simulation to finish to generate videos and images. This was particularly challenging when running on the cloud or when running a series of simulations for optimization or training AI models, where it is not possible to know how the simulation is progressing.
Users now have more control to export data and generate visuals at a lower cost during processing whilst saving on disk space, as the data is not required to be saved. In addition, users can now review simulations during processing without the interface open.
As an example, a simulation of 500k particles with 20 timesteps saved can now be reduced to the minimum data saved of one timestep but still exporting the images of the same 20 steps. This represents a reduction from 8.08 GB to 0.45 GB of saved disk space, which is a 95% file size reduction.
To find out more about what’s new in EDEM 2023.1, check out the release notes that are available on Altair Marketplace.