Mesoscale Simulations of Granular Materials with Peridynamics

The dynamic behavior of granular materials can be quite complex due to phenomena that occur at the scale of individual grains. For this reason, mesoscale simulations explicitly resolving individual grains with varying degrees of fidelity have been used to gain insight into the physics of granular materials. The vast majority of these simulations have, to date, been performed with Eulerian codes, which do a poor job of resolving fracture and grain-to-grain interactions. To address these shortcomings, we utilize a peridynamic modeling framework to examine the roles of fracture and contact under planar shock and other loading conditions. Peridynamics is a mesh-free Lagrangian technique that uses an integral formulation to better enable simulations involving fracture. Although some aspects of the peridynamic codes currently available are not well suited to the shock regime, the simulations provide results that are more physically realistic than the Eulerian simulations for some non-planar loading conditions.