Advanced Powder Technol., Vol. 18, No. 4, pp.

441 453 (2007)

VSP and Society of Powder Technology, Japan 2007.
Also available online - www.brill.nl/apt

Original paper
Cell optimization for fast contact detection in the discrete
element method algorithm
HIROSHI MIO 1,2, , ATSUKO SHIMOSAKA 3 , YOSHIYUKI SHIRAKAWA 3
and JUSUKE HIDAKA 3
1 Kyoto

Fine Particle Technology, Keihanna Interaction Plaza Inc., 1-7 Hikaridai, Seika-cho,
Soraku-gun, Kyoto 619-0237, Japan
2 Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology and
3 Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Doshisha University,
1-3 Tatara-miyakodani, Kyotanabe, Kyoto 610-0321, Japan
Received 29 August 2006; accepted 20 November 2006
AbstractThe objective of this paper is to nd out a rule of cell optimization for fast contact detection
in the discrete element method (DEM) algorithm. The contact detection process was executed by
using the conventional cell model or distinct cell model (DCM) under several particle conditions
having different particle size ratio and volume ratio, and its time was measured. The conventional
cell model is suitable for the conditions that particle size ratio, dlarge /dsmall , is small and its volume
ratio, Vsmall /V0 , is also small. The optimum cell condition of the conventional cell model is that the
mean number of particle in a cell is 1.05.0, regardless of the particle size ratio and its volume ratio.
Contact detection using DCM, which has several grids for different sized particles, is much faster than
that of the conventional model when particles have a large size ratio. The size of the larger cell does
not affect the contact detection speed; however, the size of the smaller cell is important for the fast
contact detection and its size is determined to be about 3.0 times the particle radius. Therefore, the
optimum cell condition is estimated from the particle size ratio and its volume ratio, and a large-scale
DEM will be possible.
Keywords: DEM; fast contact detection; cell optimization; speed-up; large-scale computing

NOMENCLATURE

C
c
d
G
To

cell number ()
cell size (mm)
particle diameter (mm)
grid number ()
whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: mio@kcoe.jp

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number of particles ()
number of cell array ()
number of cells ()
mean number of particles in a cell ()
particle radius (mm)
tc,1M contact detection time per one million particles (s)
tcr relative contact detection time ()
U position (mm)
V volume of particles (m3 )
n
na
nc
nP
r

1. INTRODUCTION

The DEM [1] is one of the most popular and reliable simulation methods for the
numerical analysis of solid particle behavior, and many research projects on powder
processing have been carried out over the past decade [2 8]. The demand for
DEM work is increasing with the rapid development of workstations and large-scale
computing is expected. DEM consists of an idea of determining the kinematic force
to each nite-sized particle at every discrete time step, thus the calculation time
increases with increasing the number of particles and total time steps. Although
several ideas for speeding up DEM [9 12] and some large-scale analyses have been
reported recently [13 15], there are still some important issues on DEM work in
powder processing, i.e. the effect of particle size distribution and scale-up. Most
of the calculation load in DEM is that of the contact detection process [16] and the
authors proposed two methods for fast contact detection: one was the theoretical
optimum cell size using a conventional cell model [16] and the other was the DCM,
which had several grids for different sized particles [17]. The former report said
that this optimization method was suitable for mono-sized particles or those having
a small size distribution. The latter said that the speed-up of contact detection was
possible by using DCM when particles had a large size ratio. However, it is difcult
to introduce the proper cell model, because the optimum cell model for arbitrary
conditions (size ratio or volume ratio) is still unclear.
In this paper, the contact detection time was measured by using the conventional
cell model or DCM to nd out a rule of cell optimization for fast contact detection.
Large and small particles were mixed, and the particle size ratio and volume ratio
were changed to investigate the effects of particle conditions.

2. DEM

The DEM consists of an idea of determining the kinematic force to each nite-sized
particle. The main calculation ow of the DEM consists three steps, i.e. (i) contact

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443

detection, (ii) calculation of force and (iii) update trajectories. The contact detection
process has the heaviest calculation load in the DEM [16]. There are n(n 1)/2
particle pairs in n particles and it is insignicant to check contacts for all particle
pairs. Thus, the cell method [18] is used for contact detection to avoid checking
contacts of insignicant pairs.
2.1. Contact detection using the conventional cell model
A grid of cubes is introduced and all particles are boxed in the proper cell. Each
particle should be checked for contacts with particles in neighboring cells (from Ck,l
to Ck,m ; k = x, y, z), as described in Fig. 1. Ck,l and Ck,m are cell numbers, and
they satisfy the following equations:
Uk,i (ri + rmax )
(1)
Ck,l ,
c
Uk,i + (ri + rmax )
(2)
Ck,m ,
c
where Uk,i , ri and rmax are the position, the radius of ith particle and the maximum
radius in all particles, respectively, and c denotes cell size. The particles are
numbered in order of decreasing size because the contact detection process becomes
more efcient.

Figure 1. Two-dimensional schematic diagram of the conventional cell model.

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2.2. Contact detection using the DCM

The DCM has several grids for contact detection to improve its efciency when
particles have a large size ratio [17]. The different sized grids are installed and
overlapped three-dimensionally, i.e. the optimum cell size for each size of particles
can be used. Figure 2 shows a two-dimensional schematic diagram of the DCM
when two grids are introduced. The grids are numbered in order of decreasing sizes
(G1 : large grid, G2 : small grid). Each particle is boxed in a proper cell, i.e. large
particles are in G1 , and small particles are in G2 . The particles are also numbered
in order of decreasing diameter. The contact detection process proceeds as follows.
Step 1 The contact detection between large particles is executed by using G1
(Fig. 3a).
Step 2 The small particles, which contact to large ones, are searched in G1
(Fig. 3b).
Step 3 The contact detection between small particles is carried out using G2
(Fig. 3c).
The contact detection process has three steps, when two grids are introduced.

Figure 2. Two-dimensional schematic diagram of the DCM.

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445

(a)

(b)
Figure 3. Two-dimensional schematic diagram of contact detection process using the DCM. (a) Step
1: contact detection between large particles. (b) Step 2: contact detection between a large particle and
a small particle.

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(c)
Figure 3. (c) Step 3: contact detection between small particles.

3. SIMULATION

Small and large particles of 1.212.0 mm in diameter were packed randomly in a

container by changing its size ratio and volume ratio. The size ratio, dlarge /dsmall ,
was changed from 2.0 to 10.0 and its volume ratio, Vsmall /V0 (V0 = Vsmall + Vlarge ),
was changed from 0.001 to 0.667. The number of particles, n, for each condition
was around 100 000. Table 1 shows an example of the detailed simulation conditions
of the number of particles for the case of dlarge /dsmall = 4.0. The contact
detection process was executed using the conventional cell model or the DCM in
a workstation (PowerPC 970 1.6 GHz, 2.0 Gbyte of RAM and IBM XL Fortran
version 9.1), and the time was measured. The cell size was also changed in each
condition to determine the fastest condition of cell size and the contact detection
time for each condition was converted into the case of 1 million particles to avoid
the effect of number of particles on the time.

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Figure 4 shows the relation between the contact detection time per 1 million
particles, tc,1M , and the mean number of particles in a cell, np (=n/nc ; nc is the
total number of cells), with a parameter of the contact detection model under the

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Table 1.
Simulation condition of particles (d large /d small = 4.0)
nlarge

nsmall

nsmall /(nlarge + nsmall )

Vsmall /V0

78722
63756
52129
36057
19168
10967
6425
1694

19680
31878
52129
72114
76672
87738
102806
108428

0.200
0.333
0.500
0.667
0.800
0.889
0.941
0.985

0.004
0.008
0.015
0.030
0.059
0.111
0.200
0.500

Figure 4. Relation between contact detection time per 1 million particles and mean number of
particles in a cell (d large /d small = 4.0, V small /V0 = 0.059).

conditions of dlarge /dsmall = 4.0 and Vsmall /V0 = 0.059. tc,1M give the minimum
value at a certain condition of cell size due to the calculation load balance of
cell searching and contact checking [16]. tc,1M for each particle condition was
determined to be the fastest time as shown in Fig. 4. Figure 5 shows the relation
between the number of cell array, na , and np for two cell models. na decreases with
increasing cell size and it is found that the memory usage of a cell is nearly the same
under both models. The number of cells used in the DCM is larger than that of the
conventional model; however, a lot of small particles would be boxed in a cell when
the conventional cell model are used for the particles having a large size ratio. Thus,

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Figure 5. Relation between number of cell array and mean number of particles in a cell
(d large /d small = 4.0, V small /V0 = 0.059).

the large size of array for storing particle numbers in a cell should be used. On the
other hand, a cell has a couple of particles in the case of the DCM because this model
has an advantage of being able to use the optimum cell size for all particles and the
DCM needs not have large size of array for storing particle numbers. Therefore,
the total usage of memory is similar between them. Figure 6 shows the relation
between tc,1M and the volume ratio, Vsmall /V0 , for two contact detection methods
when the particle size ratio was 4.0. tc,1M increased with increasing Vsmall /V0 when
the conventional cell model was used, i.e. the contact detection process becomes
inefcient with increasing number of small particles. On the other hand, tc,1M for the
DCM was independent of the volume ratio because the number of cell searches and
contact check could be minimized [17]. Thus, the contact detection process should
use the DCM when Vsmall /V0 is larger than 0.059. Figure 7 shows the relation
between the speed-up of contact detection, tconventional /tDCM , and Vsmall /V0 with a
parameter of particle size ratio. The speed-up increases with increasing the volume
ratio of small particles, especially for cases having a large particle size ratio. It is
found that the DCM should be used for the contact detection when the particles have
a large size ratio and the volume ratio of small particles is large. People might note
the number ratio between small and large particles when they calculate; however,
most measured particle size distribution (e.g. sieving) are given by volume ratio (or
mass ratio). Thus, the volume ratio was introduced in Figs 6 and 7, and the relation
between the speed-up and number ratio will also be obtained by Figs 6 and 7. The

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Figure 6. Relation between contact detection time per 1 million particles and volume ratio
(d large /d small = 4.0).

Figure 7. Relation between speed-up of contact detection and volume ratio with a parameter of
particle size ratio.

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Figure 8. Relation between volume ratio and size ratio for cell optimization.

speed-up of the contact detection process using the DCM in arbitrary condition, can
be easily estimated from Fig. 7. The dashed line in Fig. 7 is tconventional /tDCM = 1.3,
and Fig. 8 shows the relation between Vsmall /V0 and dlarge /dsmall with a parameter
of tconventional /tDCM . It is easy to understand from Fig. 8 that contact detection under
every particle condition can be optimized by using a proper cell model and it is
applicable to the condition having a large particle size distribution.
Figure 9 shows the relation between the relative contact detection time, tcr , and
the mean number of particles in a cell, np , when the conventional cell model was
used under the condition of tconventional /tDCM < 1.3. tcr was obtained by dividing the
fastest contact detection time into each tc,1M . np for the fastest contact detection is
given around 1.05.0, regardless of the particle size ratio. The authors had reported
in previous work that 0.70.8 particles in a cell was the optimum condition for
the conventional cell model [16]. The reason why that remark is different from
the present one is that the number of arrays used in the calculation had been
kept constant in order to avoid the effect of the amount of memory installed on
a workstation. Memory usage affects the calculation speed and it also depends
on the cell condition, as shown in Fig. 5. The allocatable array was used in the
present calculation, so that memory usage under larger cell condition was reduced.
Thus, the optimum cell condition of this paper shifts to larger range than that of

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Figure 9. Relation between relative contact detection time and mean number of particles in a cell
when the conventional cell model was used.

the previous paper and it can be concluded that the optimum cell size using the
conventional cell model is a size in which a cell has about 1.05.0 particles.
Figure 10 shows the relation between the relative contact detection time, tcr , and
the relative small cell size, csmall /rsmall when the DCM was used under the condition
of d large /d small = 10.0 with a parameter of V small /V0 . The size of the larger cell
does not affect the contact detection time, because nlarge and nc,large are too small as
compared with nsmall and nc,small ; on the other hand, the size of the smaller cell is
the most important for fast contact detection. It is found that the optimum size of
the smaller cell is around csmall /r small = 3.0, i.e. the size should be 2.03.0 when
V small /V0 is large (=0.5) and 3.03.5 when V small /V0 is small (=0.038). The size
of the larger cell would be also around clarge /r large = 3.0 along with the smaller one.

5. CONCLUSION

In this paper, the contact detection time using the conventional cell model or the
DCM was measured and discussed to clarify the optimum cell model under different
particle size ratios and volume ratios. The work can be summarized as follows:
(i) The optimum cell model depends on the particle size ratio, d large /d small , and its
volume ratio, V small /V0 , and a suitable model can be estimated from Fig. 8.

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Figure 10. Relation between relative contact detection time and relative small cell size when the
DCM was used (d large /d small = 10.0).

(ii) The optimum cell conditions of the conventional cell model is that the mean
number of particles in a cell is 1.05.0, regardless of the particle size ratio and
its volume ratio.
(iii) The size of the larger cell does not affect the contact detection speed when the
DCM is used; however, the size of the smaller cell is important for fast contact
detection. Its size is determined to be 3.0 times the particle radius.
(iv) This rule of cell optimization is applicable to the condition having a large
particle size distribution and a large-scale DEM will be possible.
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to JST (Japan Science and Technology Agency) for
nancial support to this project; Kyoto Prefecture Collaboration of Regional Entities
for the Advancement of Technological Excellence.

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