DEM

How to approach hardware selection in 2025 for Ansys CFD solvers (all budgets considered – from laptops to clusters!)

Working at the bleeding-edge of engineering simulations, LEAP’s engineers are frequently asked for advice from our clients across many different industries, who are looking to successfully navigate the balance between cost and optimal solver performance when purchasing new hardware. The following advice is primarily based on LEAP’s accumulated recent experience with a particular focus on CFD workloads (Ansys Fluent), as FVM codes are capable of scaling incredibly well if the system is well designed.

Expert Insights: Materials Calibration for DEM modelling of Bulk Solids

This post summarises our recent live panel discussion on materials calibration for discrete element method (DEM) modelling of bulk solids where we had the privilege of hosting industry leaders Daniel Grasser, Consulting Engineer at Tundra Bulk Solids and Richard Elliott, Technical Director – Bulk Handling at Rockfield Technologies. They were joined by DEM specialists from LEAP: Angelo Christakakis, Application Engineer & Technical Lead – DEM as well as Josh Hately, Engineering Solutions Manager, who moderated the discussion.

Fluid-structure interaction simulation of wave overtopping flow and vegetation for coastal hazard mitigation

Climate change is increasing the exposure of communities to coastal hazards and traditional solutions, such as seawalls or revetments, can have a high financial, social and environmental cost. As a result, nature-based solutions are encouraged in coastal policy. This guest article by University of Auckland’s Joshua Bagg, Mark Battley, Colin Whittaker and Tom Shand describes their unique research aimed to investigate the interaction between salt marsh grass and wave overtopping flow using Ansys Fluent and Ansys Rocky to inform the design of nature-based solutions.

Rocky DEM for Transfer Chutes, Conveyors and Bulk Materials Handling

LEAP recently ran a webinar that explored how Rocky DEM is helping engineers and equipment designers around Australia to easily troubleshoot existing issues and optimise their designs to avoid chute blockages due to wet/cohesive materials, improve longevity of wear liners and better configure chute flow to reduce belt misalignment and tracking issues.

This article summarises this presentation and includes video highlights including demonstrations of how Rocky DEM simulations help designers assess the overall performance of bulk materials handling systems.

Finding the sweet spot with GPU vs CPU hardware for faster processing in Rocky DEM

Engineers running particle simulations now not only demand faster solution times but also want to increase the fidelity of their DEM simulations using millions more particles. Fortunately, advances in GPU capabilities have meant that Rocky DEM customers can take advantage dedicated GPU-based solvers – but what is the hardware sweet spot for different problem sizes? Here we review a comprehensive set of benchmarks completed by the Rocky DEM developers comparing solve times on CPUs vs GPUs.

Breakthrough in accurate load mapping for bulk materials applications: DEM – FEA Coupling with ROCKY 3.0 and ANSYS (Part 1)

Today we present a new and easy way to transfer loads from DEM simulations (ROCKY version 3.0 released September 2014) to ANSYS using External Data… Read More »Breakthrough in accurate load mapping for bulk materials applications: DEM – FEA Coupling with ROCKY 3.0 and ANSYS (Part 1)