Altair EDEM Professional 2021.1.0

Key Features

Oka Wear model with Geometry Deformation
A new contact model for wear is now available in EDEM. This is the Oka wear model which calculates wear due to impact. This model also includes the option to turn geometry deformation on and off. If the deformation is turned on the geometries will deform based on the values from the wear model during the simulation.
The Oka wear model is useful for applications where hard particles impact equipment at high velocities. Such as:
- Silos and bunkers during the filling and discharge.
- Walls, hoods and deflection plates of transfer chutes.
- Pipe bends, valves and turbine fan blades with particle laden flows.
The deformation is only compatible with the CPU solver.

Archard Wear model with Geometry Deformation
Deformation has been added to the Archard wear contact model. This is an option which can be turned on for the Model in the physics options. When enabled the geometries will deform according to the Archard wear values. This option is only supported on CPU.

Selections and Sensors supported for Polyhedral Particles
Selections and Sensors are available for use with Polyhedral particles. This allows Bin Groups, Grid Bin Groups and Manual selections to be added in the Analyst. Selections can be used from visualization, graphing and data export, allowing investigation into specific aspects of a Polyhedral simulation. The method for using the Selection groups with Polyhedral is the same as with Multi-Sphere, with certain sphere only attributes hidden. Sensors are also supported by Polyhedral particles, allowing users to add Mass Flow, Velocity, Total Mass, Segregation and Density sensors to the Analyst.

Export SimSolid option added to the EDEM Analyst
An option to export the load data from EDEM to SimSolid has been added. This is a post-processing option which generates appropriate load files for use with SimSolid. Data export options allow an average over a series of time steps, multiple files per time step or a single time step to be exported. The data can be force or pressure from mesh elements or based on individual contact points.

Additional Enhancements

Creator

Delaunay Mesh Polyhedral shapes to ensure convexness
A new option is available in the polyhedral particle import dialogue. This will process shapes to ensure the imported file is convex. This is based on Delauney meshing and will generate a shape compatible with the EDEM Polyhedral solver. This option should be used on shapes which are near convex, but through the meshing process or CAD generation have small amounts of concavity.

Material Database supports Polyhedral Materials
Polyhedral particles can now be transferred into and out of the material database and polyhedral material blocks can now be generated. This enables faster generation of large quantities of Polyhedral particles and defined polyhedral particles to be used in multiple simulations. The material database stores the particle shape, particle properties, equipment materials, interaction properties and physics settings.

Geometry Import Based on Characteristic Length
An Auto option for importing geometries has been added. This will automatically calculate the average length of the CAD file which is being imported and set the Maximum and Minimum Element size in the Rigid Body Mesh options based on a percentage of the average length. These percentages may need to be adjusted according to the individual model. The default values for Max Deviation and Max Angle are not changed.

Analyst

Improved Geometry rendering
Geometry display has been improved. These improvements include faster frame rates when manipulating a model in a time step and better handling of semi-transparent geometries. This will allow higher quality images and videos to be produced and faster analysis of simulations particularly when using complex geometries. Geometry transparency is only based on the active view. So with multiple views, transparency will not look correct. To work with multiple views and transparency enable legacy geometry rendering

Coupling Interface

getGeometryMaterial function added to the Coupling Interface
Added the getGeometryMaterial to the Coupling Interface. This takes the Geometry Section ID and returns the material ID.

loadGeometry function return geometry ID
The loadGeometry function in the Coupling Interface returns the Geometry ID. Once the loadGeometry function has completed an array of newly created geometry section IDs is returned.

FlexTire settings for MotionSolve added to the Coupling Interface
Options have been added to the coupling interface to support the Pratt Miller Engineering (check name) functionality. These functions include enableFlexTire(), SetFlexTireFilePath() and setFlexTirePressure(). This allows users to set up simulations with the FlexTire feature (available from the Altair Partner Products section on Altair One) through the coupling interface.

GPU

Upgrade Cuda version to 11.2
The Polyhedral GPU engine has been upgraded to CUDA version 11.2. This will require users to update GPU drivers to the latest version. Drivers are available from the Nvidia website.

Physics

EEPA Parameter Estimator
A tool has been added to assist in defining parameters for the Edinburgh ElastoPlastic Adhesion base contact model. This tool generated two values, the Bond Number and the Critical Time step. The Bond Number is a value which is used to estimate the overall behavior of the material, the tool will generate a value for the Bond Number and give an indication of the level of cohesion these parameters will produce. The Critical Time step is a suggested time step to be used for the simulation. This value should be copied from the physics dialogue into the time step in the simulator.

Deprecated Features

Deprecate: Contact model Bond V1
The Bonded Model Version one has been deprecated to be removed in a future version.

EDEM 2021.1 contains fixes for the following issues:
- Opening a simulation modified the timestamp of the EDEM data files.
- Contacts between polyhedral particles and geometries were rendered in an incorrect position.
- Renaming a particle used in a particle body force would reset the body force particle properties to their default values.
- Geometry deformation through the Coupling Interface would not work correctly when running on the GPU engine.
- The imported template produced strange behavior when the Calculate Properties button was clicked multiple times due to incorrect cad-offset and unchecked rotation.
- Periodic boundary conditions could give different results when changing the Cell Grid Size.
- Under certain conditions the factory settings for particle position and orientation could not be modified.
- The configForTimestep in the Polyhedral API was not working as expected.
- Under certain conditions using the volume packing with user-defined size distribution would not give a warning message.
- The Volume packing feature did not correctly determine the Rmin value when a particle scale factor was used.
- A crash could occur when Domain Clipping was used in the Analyst.
- A crash could occur when there was not enough space left on the hard drive to save the time-steps during the data compression phase. In this situation a warning will now appear.
- Legacy particle rendering was slow when using complex decks and navigating between timesteps.
- The Creator tree view failed to update when a parent-child relationship was configured via the Coupling Interface
- The geometry would disappear when using Force Controller and Hysteretic Spring on the GPU solver.
- The option to add a Yield Strength in the Hysteretic Spring settings could be disabled. If a new particle type is added to the material, but a yield value is not assigned the contact will be ignored.
- The Save As option could show a file corruption warning.
- The Sphere-Geometry Grid in the GPU solver Advanced Settings always used the recommended value rather than a user defined value.
- A crash could occur when using the setTimeStepCoupling() function if invoked prior to running a simulation.
- An error was reported when EDEMCal was opened from the EDEM 2021 directory.
- An issue could occur during the polyhedral particle to geometry contact detection. The issue could cause large nonphysical overlaps to be calculated and particles passing through geometries.
- The wrong value could be passed to the contact model via the Polyhedral API.
- Certain GPU options, Contact Radius and Physical Radius buttons were available for the Polyhedral factories where they are not relevant.
- A crash could occur when using the Volume Packing functionality due to the material blocks having the same name. A unique name will now be created per Volume Packing instance, older decks with multiple instances Volume Packing should be manually updated to give the block a unique name in the settings.
- The Material label was missing in the Geometry options.
- Force Equation text boxes in Force and Torque Motion controllers showed black text in Dark Theme.
- Missing elements from imported .obj CAD files
- CoM wasn't being automatically updated when the replace geometry function was invoked. This impacts GUI and command line modes, coupled and un-coupled.
- Ambiguous 'Feature(s): currently have keys in use' license error displayed when license features were not available.