GROUND TRANSPORTATION TRACTOR LAWN MOWER DEM SIMULATION

FROM THE FARM

TO THE HOME:
DEM IMPROVES
THE WORLD
TITUS SGRO
CD-adapco

M
ore powerful computing
hardware has allowed automotive
companies to expand upon their
design simulations, reaching out from
the ‘core’ optimization areas of external
aerodynamics and engine design to improve
upon and perfect virtually every aspect
of an automobile. One particular group of
vehicles that has lagged behind traditionally
but is now racing to catch up is off-road
vehicles. This category includes, in addition
to ATVs, massive industrial applications
like farming equipment and construction
vehicles as well as household items such
as lawn mowers and snow blowers. Recent
technological advances in the simulation
world allows such machines to be modeled
using discrete elements to model small
particles, bypassing approximations and
guesswork and going to high-fidelity
examination of the true operating
conditions of such vehicles.

48 DYNAMICS ISSUE 35

While fluid flow has been a centerpiece of
the Computer aided Engineering (CAE) and
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for
decades, being able to predict the motion
of individual particles has been a frustrating
utopia sought by CAE users. Perhaps the
industry sector most demanding such
applications has been the automotive
industry, seeking to understand and improve
the complex processes going on within many
agricultural, construction and household
vehicles. These vehicles, such as farm
tractors, lawn mowers, and front loaders, are
used to pick up and move enormous amounts
of tiny particles, each of which can be affected
by airflow and motor mechanics, among
many other physical mechanics. With recent
advances in the simulation of discrete particles
and computing power, engineers are finally
able to use CAE to improve and optimize these
vehicles by modeling each particle individually
to create a much more faithful simulation of
these complex machines.
Contaminant particles such as dust, as well as
particulates that these objects are designed
to work with have previously been simulated
in various methods as some form of fluid
continuum. These particles include grass
blades (for a lawn mower), gravel and dirt (for
construction equipment), or grain for farming
equipment. Simulating these particles as a
fluid continuum creates imperfect results due
to the simplification.
TRACTOR LAWN MOWER DEM SIMULATION GROUND TRANSPORTATION
APPLICATIONS OF DEM
Discrete Element Modeling (DEM) using
Lagrangian Multiphase has already been
applied to a multitude of applications in
industries across the world, from icing on
airplane wings to mud and dirt simulation. Now
this powerful technology is being applied to the
off-road vehicle sector. Applications include:
• Simulation of load for construction vehicles,
such as dump trucks, excavators, and
loaders
• Farming equipment like tractors and
harvesters
• Domestic machinery such as lawn mowers,
snow blowers, and all-terrain vehicles
• In other areas of the Ground Transportation
Industry, rain, mud, or snow modeling
A host of other industries have already begun
using DEM particles, such as spray particles
or atomizers – very common in the food FIGURE 1 - Applications of DEM include har-
industry, as well as painting with aerosol cans vesters, construction vehicles, and – of course
or industrial applications for the automotive – lawn mowers
and aerospace industries – as well as the Life
Sciences industry, investigating the dispersal
of medication in a patient’s blood from a pill or
in the lungs from an inhaler. representation of the carrier fluid phase.” This
means that the main fluid phase is solved as
a continuum using the time-averaged Navier-
LAGRANGIAN MULTIPHASE Stokes equations. The second, discretized
The Lagrangian-Eulerian approach is based phase, either a second fluid dispersed in
on “a statistical description of the dispersed relatively small pockets (eg. bubbles or
phase in terms of a stochastic point process droplets) or small particulates of a solid that is
that is coupled with an Eulerian statistical mixed in with the liquid.
DYNAMICS ISSUE 35 49
 GROUND TRANSPORTATION TRACTOR LAWN MOWER DEM SIMULATION
The Lagrangian Multiphase model, makes use
of DEM particles and simulates each particle
separately, affected by the fluid domain and
collisions with other particles and features
within the simulation boundaries. This is
the most faithful representation of particles
possible within a fluid simulation, allowing for
the examination of primary and secondary
breakup models, as well as turbulent
dispersion. However, as one might be able
to imagine, it also requires a lot of processor
power, especially when the number of particles
exceed 105. STAR-CCM+ has several new
features within the latest version to improve
DEM performance by up to a factor of 2.5.
STAR-CCM+ LEADS THE
COMPETITION
CD-adapco’s flagship software, STAR-CCM+,
introduced DEM simulation by Lagrangian
Multiphase in 2010 with version 5.06, and
has been improving it ever since to lead
particle simulation in the Computer Aided
Engineering field. With the most recent
release, STAR-CCM+ has changed the game
again, with dynamic load balancing to improve
runtimes for applications by at least a factor
of 2.5. In addition, improvements to the AMG
algorithm has decreased simulation time on
high processor count clusters in transient
simulations, which all DEM simulations should
be run as, since there is no steady state for an
individual particle with force acting on it.
The DEM and Lagrangian Multiphase has
been well validated through numerous
tests comparing to experimental data and
functions flawlessly with other physics
models within STAR-CCM+, such as gravity
and various flow regimes.
One of the most important tools that STAR-CCM+
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offers for DEM simulations, ironically, has little
to do with DEM itself, but is absolutely critical for
any simulation: our world class geometry cleanup
and meshing tools. Without clean, closed CAD
files and precise volumetric geometry, no CAE
user will get usable results. STAR-CCM+ offers
a multitude of tools for this purpose, including
our surface wrapper tool, various volume
meshing functions, and parts-based meshing.
Normally, repairing CAD models that CAE
users generally must work with could take
weeks. Pierced faces, free edges, and other
imperfections can cause catastrophic issues
in a physical simulation, but STAR-CCM+ offers
its proprietary surface wrapper tool, which
encloses the model in a virtual bubble, closing
over most of the imperfections within minutes.
The vast majority of the imperfections in the
CAD model are automatically repaired by the
meshing routine and removed in minutes,
drastically cutting down the time needed to
prepare the mesh for simulation.
In addition, STAR-CCM+ has several volume
mesh creators, such as the trim mesher and
the polygonal mesher, providing speed and
control to the users depending on what their
needs are. Parts-Based Meshing allows users
to associate mesh definitions with geometric
entities, resulting in greater control, better
automation and reduced turnaround time.
TWO BLADE TRACTOR LAWN
MOWER
The example that is presented is a dual bladed
tractor lawn mower, with the blades positioned
under the driver, as seen in figure x. A plate
protects the driver from the annoyances of
grass being thrown up at them. The blades
were set in their own region with a separate
mesh and spun using STAR-CCM+’s Rigid Body
DYNAMICS ISSUE 35
FIGURES 2 & 3 - Tractor Lawn Mower Mesh
Motion (RBM), which rotates the entire region
about a set axis. Because of the limitations of
RBM, CD-adapco recommends that each time-
step of the rotation turn the spinning region
by 1 degree at most so that the rotating cells
do not become completely out of line with the
stationary cells. In the simulation pictured, the
two meter long blades are spinning at 1500
revolutions per minute, which translated into
a time-step of 1.11x10 -4s. The simulation
was set at 20 inner iterations per time-step
to ensure convergence. The particle injector
field consisted of a 15x15 rectangular grid of
injectors and each injector was set to inject
100 particles per second. The simulation ran
for a bit over 0.5s of simulation time, meaning
that almost 13,000 particles were injected.
Certain assumptions and approximations
were used within the simulation. The most
important assumption was that the lawn
mower tractor did not actually move within the
simulation. The wheel rotation, translation,
and creation of a real grass field for the
lawn mower to drive over was beyond the
reasonable scope of the simulation. Thus the
movement was simulated by having the grass
particles constantly injected into the cutting
areas. Since the full tractor body was not
included in the simulation, it did not need to
be meshed at all, allowing for finer refinement
of the blades, protector plate, and air volume
in the area of question.
Another approximation was that the grass
external to the plate was not physically present
to impede the motion of the moving particles.
Thus an invisible barrier was setup around the
perimeter of the plate to the ground to prevent
the leakage of particles in areas besides
the ejector. This barrier was set as a porous
region, allowing the fluid (air) to flow freely but
not allowing the particles to cross the barrier.

FIGURE 4 - Airflow within the mowing deck
FIGURES 5 & 6 - Grass particles in motion
The third major approximation was the shape
of the grass particles. Every grass particle was
modeled as a composite of spherical particles
put in a conical shape that was 1 cm long.
The composite particle was forbidden from
being broken. Only one particle model was
used, to keep it simple and computationally
inexpensive. Additionally, the particles are
injected into the region already separated from
the ground; the lawn mower blades are not
involved in separating them from the injector in
any way and only provide air motion.
Because of the small time-step (caused by
the 1 degree rotation mentioned above), a
detailed picture of the motion of the particles
was created, allowing for the visualization of
areas where clumping occurred, as well as
areas that were affected by internal vortices.
TRACTOR LAWN MOWER DEM SIMULATION GROUND TRANSPORTATION
Every particle was permitted to only exit
through the ejector (in all figures, the
ejector is positioned on the left hand
side). The particles are modeled with drag
and their density set to a value such that
each particle would be primarily affected
by the motion caused by the spinning
blades. As with the previous case study,
the particles were colored with respect to
their velocity magnitude.
The benefit of this simulation was to
demonstrate that a complex physical
simulation of a lawn mower can be
accurately modeled, allowing for
designers to see the movement of each
individual blade of grass. This permits the
designers to modify their design based
on complexities too subtle to see with
the naked eye, modifications which can
DYNAMICS ISSUE 35
significantly increase the efficiency, reducing
fuel consumption and time required to mow.
CONCLUSION
CD-adapco has brought exciting new possibilities
to the CAE world with Discrete Element Method
modeling in STAR-CCM+. The ability to model
individual particles moving independently within
a simulation has wide ranging applications within
the Ground Transportation Industry, especially for
off-road vehicles.
Presented here were applications of DEM
modeling, a brief explanation of how STAR-CCM+
solves for the motion of particles, and a basic
best-practice guide for quickly delving into DEM
modeling. In addition, a few specific examples
were provided to illustrate in detail how DEM
modeling can be used.
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