MercuryDPM: A fast and flexible particle solver part a: Technical advances

MercuryDPM is an open-source particle simulation tool—fully written in C++—developed at the University of Twente. It contains a large range of contact models, allowing for simulations of complex interactions such as sintering, breaking, plastic deformation, wet-materials and cohesion, all of which have important industrial applications. The code also contains novel complex wall generation techniques, that can exactly model real industrial geometries. Additionally, MercuryDPMs’ state-of-the-art built-in statistics package constructs accurate three-dimensional continuum fields such as density, velocity, structure and stress tensors, providing information often not available from scaled-down model experiments or pilot plants. The statistics package was initially developed to analyse granular mixtures flowing over inclined channels, and has since been extended to investigate several other granular applications. In this proceeding, we review these novel techniques, whereas its applications will be discussed in its sequel.