Modeling, parametrizing, and simulating a DEM-based soil model for industrial applications

Abstract Simulation and simulation-assisted methods have a large impact for product development in many industrial fields. Multibody dynamics (MBD) simulation, for instance, is an established method used for durability analysis and energy efficiency calculations in vehicle engineering, based on its ability to provide accurate prediction of interaction forces. In the domain of off-road vehicles and heavy machinery, such considerations need to be expanded by a method to model the soil and its interaction with the vehicle, i.e., the soil–tool interaction, as the resulting forces may drastically influence the durability and energy efficiency of the machine. Therefore, the model must be chosen carefully to maintain the high accuracy in the force prediction for the soil–tool interaction, as required for a reliable and robust product development. In this contribution, we present a workflow to tackle this topic, based on a cosimulation scheme between an MBD-based vehicle model and a particle simulation realized in the Discrete Element Method (DEM). The simulated soil is parametrized and validated by matching simulation results from a virtual experiment with measurement data from real-world soil laboratory experiments as the triaxial compression test. Using this process, the applicability and performance of the numerical methods can be determined.