Open Access

ARTICLE

Discrete Element Modelling of Dynamic Behaviour of Rockfills for Resisting High Speed Projectile Penetration

Tingting Zhao¹, Y. T. Feng^2,*, Jie Zhang¹, Zhihua Wang¹, Zhiyong Wang¹

1 College of Mechanical and Vehical Engineering, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan, 030024, China
2 Zienkiewicz Centre for Computational Engineering, Swansea University, Swansea, SA2 8PP, UK

* Corresponding Author: Y. T. Feng. Email:

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Computational Mechanics of Granular Materials and its Engineering Applications)

Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences 2021, 127(2), 721-735. https://doi.org/10.32604/cmes.2021.015913

Received 26 January 2021; Accepted 04 March 2021; Issue published 19 April 2021

Abstract

This paper presents a convex polyhedral based discrete element method for modelling the dynamic behaviour of rockfills for resisting high speed projectile penetration. The contact between two convex polyhedra is defined by the Minkowski overlap and determined by the GJK and EPA algorithm. The contact force is calculated by a Minkowski overlap based normal model. The rotational motion of polyhedral particles is solved by employing a quaternion based orientation representation scheme. The energy-conserving nature of the polyhedral DEM method ensures a robust and effective modelling of convex particle systems. The method is applied to simulate the dynamic behaviour of a rockfill system under impact of a high speed projectile. The rockfill sample is generated by a three-dimensional Voronoi meso method with a specific particle size distribution. The penetrating process of the projectile striking the rockfill target is simulated. Some physical quantities associated with the projectile such as the residual velocity, penetration resistance, and deflection angle are monitored which can reflect the influence of the characteristics of the rockfill target on its anti-penetration performance. It can be concluded that the developed polyhedral DEM method is a very promising numerical approach in analysing the dynamic behaviour of rockfill systems subject to high speed projectile impact.

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Citations