Effect of particle shape on domino wave propagation: a perspective from 3D, anisotropic discrete element simulations

Abstract

A fundamental understanding of the underlying physics of granular systems is not only of academic interest, but is also relevant for industrial applications. One specific aspect that is currently only poorly understood is the effect of particle shape on the dynamics of such systems. In this work the effect of particle shape on domino wave propagation was studied using 3D, anisotropic discrete element simulations. The dominoes were modelled using the three-dimensional super-quadric equation and very good agreement between the intrinsic collision speeds predicted by the simulations and the corresponding experimental data was observed. Furthermore, the influence of particle blockiness on the collision dynamics of dominoes was investigated numerically using particle shapes ranging from ellipsoids to almost cuboid particles. It was found that the intrinsic collision speed increased with increasing particle blockiness. It was also shown that a higher initial contact point favours the transmission of kinetic energy in the direction of the wave propagation, leading to a higher intrinsic collision speed for dominoes of higher blockiness. KeywordsDiscrete element model • Anisotropic particles • Granular material • Contact mechanics • Propagating wave List of symbols a, b, c Half lengths of particle principal axes (m) dt Time step of DEM simulations (s)

Rheological response of nonspherical granular flows down an incline

“…Therefore, to mimic its effects, simple rolling friction has been used in systems of spheres [35]. Other authors have reproduced particle shape, identifying it directly from digitized images [36], using polygons or polyhedra [37][38][39][40], superquadrics [41], spheropolygons or spheropolyhedra [42,43], nurbs [44], level sets [45], and clumps of disks or spheres [46][47][48]. Moreover, advanced models that include the contact geometry and particle geometry have been developed by combining DEM with finite element formulations [36,49].…”

Toppling Dynamics of Regularly Spaced Dominoes in an Array

“…Using the constitutive law involving the contact force and deformation of the collision body is another way of quantifying impact interactions. For example, Lu et al [14] has adopted the discrete element method to model the interactions between dominoes and the ground which shows a good agreement between numerical results and experimental observations. However, simulations using this method may encounter various difficulties in determination of physical parameters of the model or numerical integration of differential equations using small integration step.…”

“…Since each domino in the array is marginally stable, destabilizing force can propagate through the array in a wave of destabilizing collisions once it is sufficient to topple the first domino. Modeling the dynamics of such destabilization is a topic of ongoing research, see e.g., [11,12,13,14]. The existing works have focused on investigating the characteristics of the domino wave, such as the necessary conditions for toppling and the natural speed of wave propagation (see e.g., [1]).…”

Toppling dynamics of a mass-varying domino system

“…In particular, the propagation speed and the energy evolution of the domino wave are the main characteristics studied by many researchers for understanding different chain events, e.g. [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28].…”

“…van Leeuwen [26] and Fujii et al [27] further developed the cooperative group model by taking friction into account. Furthermore, Lu et al [28] applied the discrete element method to simulate domino's falling, and Shi et al [17] developed a precise numerical model with consideration of multipoint impacts between dominoes. Until now, most of the existing studies have focused on studying the characteristics of the domino wave by using uniform dominoes, and the studies of nonuniform dominoes are very limited.…”