A combined SPH-DEM approach for extremely deformed granular packings: validation and compression tests

We present a novel smoothed particle hydrodynamics-discrete element method (SPH-DEM) approach for the simulation of deformable granular media. First, we show how the method converges to the analytical solution in a simple contact mechanics problem, namely the Hertz contact law for elastic spherical grains. Second, we analyze the evolution of a 2D packing of disks under uniaxial compression, displaying the evolution of key metrics of the packing such as the coordination number and the vertical stress. We show that the code produces data in quantitative agreement with what is known from literature. Finally, we demonstrate that our SPH-DEM coupling can be used to study packings of deformable grains from the onset of jamming to extremely compacted states, reaching packing fractions of $$\phi \simeq 0.995$$ ϕ ≃ 0.995 .