Wear modelling in EDEM - Oka Erosive Wear Model - EDEM API

Stephen Cole

Overview

Erosive wear is an important phenomenon in a wide range of applications where the particles of a granular material impact equipment.

The Oka wear model is widely used for the DEM modelling of erosive wear.

The model computes the volume of removed material due to erosion. The corresponding depth of wear on CAD geometry mesh elements is computed in EDEM. This enables the modelling of geometry deformation due to erosion and a version of the model with this feature is also included.

For further details please refer to the attached PDF document.

The model can be downloaded from the attached ZIP files:

OkaWear.zip

This is a GPU enabled version of the Oka model which supports spherical and polyhedral particles on CPU and GPU (polyhedral only GPU). 

This model also uses the API parameters GUI, inputs are set via the Configure option in the Physics section of the EDEM Creator.

Usage/Installation Instructions

Setup

1. Copy the OkaWear.dll (or .so for Linux) and the OkaWear.cu file to the same location as the simulation .dem file
2. Open the simulation and in the EDEM Creator > Physics > Particle To Geometry section select Edit Contact Chain to add OkaWear from the Plug-in models section
   1. Note you can also use the built in Oka Wear model from the Additional Models section, this API is a duplicate of the in-built model which uses can modify
3. Select the model and then click on the Configure cog
   1. Select the Green + to add required geometries to the Parameter Editor
   2. Add the wear constant, hardness and scaling factor values
   3. Select Enable Deformation
4. Select OK and save

Note that the ConveyorExample file has this setup already with both spheres and polyhedral particles. Scaling factor is set to 500,000 purely to show the wear in a short simulation time frame

To run

• This API model is setup to support both CPU and GPU as well as both Polyhedral and Spherical particle shapes

Post-processing

• In the EDEM Analyst under Display > Geometries > Head Pulley you can color by Oka Wear (or export this data)