Design of a Large Scale Discrete Element Soil Model for High Performance Computing Systems Alex R. Carrillo carrillo@bugs.wes.army.mil David A. Horner horner@gmlsun.wes.army.mil John F. Peters petersj@ex1.wes.army.mil John E. West hatter@wes.army.mil U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station 3909 Halls Ferry Road Vicksburg, Mississippi 39180-6199 Abstract: 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. Keywords: discrete, soil, computing, particle, modeling, parallel, performance, DEM Introduction A goal of the Army today is to accomplish Research and Development tasks through modeling and simulation applications. As an example, virtual proving grounds (VPG) are being developed to assist in the evaluation of fielding new vehicles and vehicle mounted weapon systems. VPG’s will, through modeling and simulation of the vehicle components, be used to accomplish the many tasks required to field a new system from concept to prototype. In support of this effort, the U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station is developing numerical methods for evaluating the off-road performance of military land vehicles. One of the keys to successful off-road vehicle VPG is fast simulation of vehicle soil interaction. Many applications for soil-structure interaction and particle physics involve large discontinuous deformations of the particulate media. Such problems include: soil plowing, penetrometers, pile driving, soil-tire interactions, hopper flows, and mass movements by avalanche. For a particular problem, 0-89791-854-1/1996/$5.00 © 1996 IEEE