An effective energy-conserving contact modelling strategy for spherical harmonic particles represented by surface triangular meshes with automatic simplification

An effective discrete element modelling strategy for triangular mesh represented spherical harmonic particles is proposed. It features: (1) using a golden spiral lattice on the unit sphere to generate an initial with any number of vertices/triangles star-shaped surface; (2) applying edge contraction simplification algorithm reduce size desired level; and (3) adopting energy-conserving linear normal contact model compute geometric force features contacting particles. In particular, applicable mesh. algorithmically very simple highly effective, can be easily incorporated into existing frameworks. Numerical experiments are conducted demonstrate that simplified by not only have low approximation error but also achieve expected mechanical responses. Thus this approach serve as ideal pre-processing tool optimise large input in order significantly computational cost associated simulations without compromising accuracy.