Our group tends to take a discrete view of particle processing. That is, we focus on the interactions of individual grains as a means of understanding the collective behavior of the bulk material. This viewpoint manifests itself both in our theoretical approach as well as our computations.
The interactions of individual grains and surfaces has long been an area of research, both experimentally and theoretically, and much has been learned in this area. Because of this and the ever increasing power and efficiency of modern computers, researchers have recently turned to micro-mechanical methods of investigation for the study of granular materials. This approach determines the macroscopic behavior of the flow through simulation of many simultaneous microscopic collision events. This type of model has been used with success for a variety applications, such as: pile formation, shaking simulation, or tumbler mixers and forms the basis of much of our computational work.
