[szvsw]

Okay, fair, I was using fluid loosely (and inaccurately) to mean both granular and fluid behavior. But there’s nothing inherently incompatible between fluid dynamics and the discrete element method as far as I am aware, just like there is nothing inherently incompatible with solids. Sure SPH or LBM or FVM are the more traditional choices for fluids and computationally more tractable in most cases, but they aren’t necessarily “more right.”

Awesome paper on how powerful particle based methods can be:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187775032...

And a fun image of a DEM solid model of fracture:

http://www.cba.mit.edu/media/DEM/index.html

[Azrael3000]

No worries. I would still consider these methods to be very different from each other. SPH, FVM and so on are methods to discretize continuum equations. If you have a continuum equation that describes your granular material you can use them and DEM kind of interchangeably. But often times such continuum equations do not exist for granular media or they break down in certain flow regimes. DEM on the other hand is not based on the continuum representation. Instead it is based on interaction forces that originate from particles being close by. While it might be possible to link these two, afaik nobody has done this, but I'm no longer active in the field.

[szvsw]

Take a look at the paper I linked, specifically section 4, which illustrates finding force laws to match the desired dynamics of a real physical material (in this case, Delrin, including elastic and plastic deformation.

I guarantee you will like this paper!