AN EXPLICIT DYNAMIC METHOD FOR A DISCRETE ELEMENT MODEL USING THE PRINCIPLE OF HYBRID-TYPE VIRTUAL WORK

A rigid bodies spring model (RBSM) has been developed as a numerical model to generalize limit analysis in plasticity, in which a structure to be analyzed is idealized as an assemblage of rigid bodies connected by normal and tangential springs. Although contact surfaces are handled differently in RBSM and in the distinct element method (DEM), the number of degrees of freedom is the same in both cases. If each element is formulated by the explicit method, the algorithm for a dynamic analysis is the same. In this paper, we illustrate the formulation of RBSM for each element using the principle of hybrid virtual work. In addition, we propose a new RBSM approach for contact types, namely, edge-to-edge contact. Finally, we examine the applicability of dynamic analysis using RBSM.