The divergence of nearby trajectories in soft-sphere DEM

WD Fullmer and R Porcu and J Musser and AS Almgren and I Srivastava, PARTICUOLOGY, 63, 1-8 (2022).

DOI: 10.1016/j.partic.2021.06.008

The n-body instability is investigated with the soft-sphere discrete element method. The divergence of nearby trajectories is quantified by the dynamical memory time. Using the inverse proportionality between the dynamical memory time and the largest Lyapunov exponent, the soft-sphere discrete ele-ment method results are compared to previous hard-sphere molecular dynamics data for the first time. Good agreement is observed at low concentrations and the degree of instability is shown to increase asymptotically with increasing spring stiffness. At particle concentrations above 30%, the soft-sphere Lya-punov exponents increase faster than the corresponding hard-sphere data. This paper concludes with a demonstration of how this case study may be used in conjunction with regression testing and code verification activities. (c) 2021 Chinese Society of Particuology and Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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