Formulation and procedure to treat a discrete particle model as a continuum
Purpose - The pm-pose of this paper is to continue the path opened by previous researches that focused on the stress and deformation behaviour of discrete particle models, along with mechanical and morphological analyses. Design/methodology/approach - This work presents a formulation that allows the study of discrete particle models as if they were continuum. By knowing forces, torques, displacements and rotations that occur inside a particle media whenever a force is loading it, this formulation permits to obtain the stress, the torque, strain and rotation tensors of the media. Findings - These tensors are equivalent to the ones that would have been obtained by treating a discrete media as if it were a continuum. In addition, a procedure to apply the formulas to a numerical model has been detailed in the text. Finally, these formulas are compared to the one obtained from an energy balance approach to establish a connection between the forces and the increase of the energy produced inside the media. Originality/value - This paper presents a proposal of formulation to calculate the stress, torque, deformation and curvature tensor for discrete particle medias, welded or non-welded, in order to study them as if they were continuous.
deformation torque stress (materials) granular materials discrete element method finite element method contact problems