Digital Visualisation and Multi-scale Simulation of Complex Particulate Processes
Richard Williams, University of Birmingham
Date and time: Thursday 21st March 2013 at 16:00
Location: G29, Mech Eng
Host: Hamid Dehghani
There has been a transformation in the use of advanced sensing methods to recreate fully three-dimensional visualisations of complex materials. This has enabled the development and validation of digital modelling and simulation approaches using multi-scale computation platforms. The seminar illustrates the application of a digital modelling method that can take account of three-dimensional shape (and inherent physical and chemical properties) of particulate components, providing a useful tool in various engineering process. For example, this is useful in predicting best ways handling of high, medium and low level radioactive waste that is so critical in decommissioning and dismantling nuclear installations of legacy nuclear medical and military hardware. The processes involve making decisions on where to ”cut” existing plant components and then how to pack these components into boxes, which are then cemented and kept for long term storage as the level of radioactive declines with time. The seminar will illustrate the utility of the method and its ability to take data at plant scale (m-scale) and then deduce behaviours at sub millimetre scale in the packed containers. A variety of modelling approaches are used as a part of this approach including cutting algorithms, geometric and dynamic (distinct element) force models, and lattice Boltzmann methods.
These methods are applicable to other complex particulate systems including simulation of waste, building recycling, disintegration of pharmaceutical tablets, heap leaching and related minerals separations processes. The paper introduces the basic concepts of this multi-scale and multi-model approach.
Work is on-going using these methods that combine tomographic type measurements with multi-scale simulation using hybrid CPU-GPU platforms based on NVIDIA Mole 8.5 systems (2 Petaflops peak performance in single precision) that can handle real time simulation of millions of particles. Work is seeking to utilise its inherent parallelism in simulation methods with the system architecture to scale out the simulations.
Professor Richard Williams is a Professor of Energy and Mineral Resources Engineering (University of Birmingham) and Visiting Professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Institute of Process Engineering, Beijing)