Statistical Control of Material Generation in DEM

With the development of computer technology and numerical methods, the discrete element method (DEM) has become increasingly used. This method has a number of advantages, for example, it allows considering the dynamics of material destruction, and thus taking into account a number of phenomena inaccessible to continuous methods. Using DEM, it is possible to consider the sequence of material destruction, further behavior/movement of material fragments, and monitor the formation of a cluster of fragments. One of the options for implementing the algorithm for generating discrete-element material is to use random values of the position of elements and their sizes. In this case, each new generation of material will lead to a variation in the calculation result. In order to achieve a given security of the DEM calculation result and minimize the error of the discrete-element material generation method, the statistical control method is used. Within the framework of statistical control of material generation, the relative error of the results obtained with this material was estimated, and thus changes were made to the material generation algorithm or the stability of the algorithm was confi rmed.