EDEM

EDEM is high-performance software for bulk material simulation. Powered by state-of-the-art Discrete Element Method (DEM) technology, EDEM quickly and accurately simulates and analyses the behavior of bulk materials such as coal, mined ores, soil, tablet, and powders. EDEM simulation provides engineers with crucial insight into how bulk materials will interact with their equipment over a range of operating and process conditions. EDEM is being deployed in a wide range of industries including heavy equipment manufacturing, agriculture, mining, and process manufacturing.

The EDEM team works closely with ANSYS, Inc. to understand customer needs and bring innovative software solutions through the development of co-simulation capabilities. This includes:

• Optimizing equipment design with EDEM and Ansys Mechanical

• EDEM and Ansys have worked together to develop a capability enabling engineers to access EDEM bulk materials simulation data directly within Ansys Workbench. This allows users to include high-quality and realistic representations of bulk materials and their complex behaviors in Finite Element Analysis.

  Using EDEM with Ansys removes the reliance on hand-calculation and assumption to determine equipment loading and means engineers are also able to reduce the frequency and cost of expensive physical prototyping.

Austin Engineering use EDEM with Ansys FEA to optimize truck bodies performance.

• Investigating particle-fluid systems with the 'Parallel EDEM CFD Coupling for Ansys Fluent'

• EDEM and Ansys have developed an open-source, two-way coupling between EDEM and Ansys Fluent to provide a unique capability to model particle-fluid flows at the particle-scale. EDEM complements the Ansys Fluent solid-fluid phase capability by adding discrete particle effects to the continuum model. The coupling allows Ansys Fluent and EDEM to run using parallel processing in co-simulation environments. As an open-source software, users also have access to the coupling source code and can innovate and customize how Fluent and EDEM work together.

Aggregate dryer using EDEM-Fluent Coupling (Courtesy of Astec, Inc.)