FAST PARTICLE PAIR DETECTION ALGORITHMS FOR PARTICLE SIMULATIONS

Abstract

New algorithms with O(N) complexity have been developed for fast particle-pair detections in particle simulations like the discrete element method (DEM) and molecular dynamic (MD). They exhibit robustness against broad particle size distributions when compared with conventional boxing methods. Almost similar calculation speeds are achieved at particle size distributions from is mono-size to 1:10 while the linked-cell method results in calculations more than 20 times. The basic algorithm, level-boxing, uses the variable search range according to each particle. The advanced method, multi-level boxing, employs multiple cell layers to reduce the particle size discrepancy. Another method, indexed-level boxing, reduces the size of cell arrays by introducing the hash procedure to access the cell array, and is effective for sparse particle systems with a large number of particles.