Computational study investigating the influence of long-range repulsive forces on the collective behaviour of particulate media

Several unit operations in chemical and process engineering industries often deal with particulate materials at some stages of their operation cycle. The bulk behaviour of particulate materials strongly depends on their single-particle properties, packing conditions, loading conditions experienced by the particulate materials and the interaction between the individual particles in the assembly. Research activities on modelling the micro and nano mechanical behaviour of particulate materials have grown rapidly in the recent past, providing new insights on the internal behaviour of particulate assemblies under mechanical loading. However, most of the published studies consider the particulates as either non-cohesive or cohesive systems with attractive forces acting between the particles. Existing studies often ignore the contribution of the long-range forces experienced by contiguous particles, i.e., the contribution of forces acting between contiguous particles even when they do not touch or overlap, yet sufficiently closer that their contribution to the bulk strength can not be ignored as is often the case in nano particulate assemblies. In this paper, using Discrete Element Method (DEM), we report results on the mechanical characteristics of repulsive particulate media subjected to quasi-static compressive loading, both at the assembly and particulate levels. By investigating several features of repulsive and non-repulsive dry particulate systems, we find that, the long-range repulsive force contribution plays a dominant role on the bulk deformation characteristics of particulate media.