A Numerical Adhesive Contact Law for Deformable Particles

Adhesive contact laws exist for particles where the material exhibits elastic behaviour and can include plasticity and time dependent response. However, the material description is usually limited to relatively simple behaviour. In this work we introduce the development and implementation of a general plasticity model that captures more complex material behaviour leading to a range of deformation mechanisms at the contact. Adhesion is considered by cohesive zone modelling. This framework is used to an adhesive contact law for large deformation using parametric finite element studies. The new contact law helps improve the accuracy of discrete element models used to characterise the behaviour of particulate systems.