Co-simulations of discrete and finite element codes

This paper describes methods and algorithms implemented for the co-simulation between a mesh-free discrete element method (DEM) code and a finite element analysis (FEA) code under control of a co-simulation middleware software environment. The involved software packages, the DEM code SimPARTIX, the FEA code Abaqus and the co-simulation environment MpCCI are briefly described. The codes were extended to account for the exchange of quantities (positions, velocities, forces, heat) between the individual particles on the DEM side and the contact surfaces of the FE application, which now allows the joint simulation of the structure-structure interaction between a particulate phase and arbitrary elastic structures. The MpCCI software package was improved with respect to the massive parallel computation of the DEM code and high-speed communication on high performance computing (HPC) clusters.A few validation examples as well as a more complex simulation of the motion of a tire on sticky soil will be presented.