Design of a Large Scale Discrete Element Soil Model for High Performance Computing Systems

The Discrete Element Model (DEM) is an alternative to the classical continuum mechanics approach for problems with flow-like deformations of solids. DEM is especially well-suited for problems such as soil plowing where the media is subject to large discontinuous deformations. The goal of this project was to develop a large-scale three dimensional DEM soil modeling system capable of handling problems with potentially several million particles. This paper discusses the development of that model and the factors driving it toward a High Performance Computing (HPC) solution. It also discusses how work in progress is making use of heterogeneous HPC environments and high speed networks to produce a real-time user interaction and visualization capability.