I-Corps: Multi-physics Software for Arbitrarily-shaped Objects

这个I-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是一种技术的应用，水平集离散元方法（LS-DEM），以解决现实世界的问题。 具体而言，该项目将研究该技术在岩土工程、土木工程、食品储存、增材制造工艺、制药生产线以及采矿和挖掘行业等领域的商业可行性。 LS-DEM具有超越工程实践中现有技术的能力，能够更准确地分析工程设计，增强现有工程流程的优化，并在时间和金钱方面降低工程成本。此外，通过增加对该技术所能提供的物理过程的了解，现有和新基础设施的安全性有可能得到大幅改善。总的来说，所提出的技术有可能成为一种变革性的技术，积极影响许多商业industries.This I-Corps项目调查潜在的商业应用和市场的水平集离散元方法（LS-DEM）技术。 该方法的智能优点是允许快速模拟和建模任何形状的离散对象，克服了该领域的主要挑战。离散对象的建模在许多商业应用中非常重要，而形状对于正确理解系统至关重要。 例如，球形物体的行为与矩形物体非常不同，但目前的离散方法大多限于大颗粒系统中的球形近似。这导致LS-DEM通过有效和准确地复制任何组件的形状来克服的准确性和信息量较低的结果。 通过过去的研究，LS-DEM已被证明是高度准确和预测性的工程工具。这项工作将调查各种商业应用，在这些应用中，更好地理解离散对象的相互作用可以影响我们对所讨论的系统的工程和科学理解。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the applications of a technology, the Level Set Discrete Element Method (LS-DEM), to solve real-world problems. Specifically, the project will look at the commercial viability of the technology in geotechnical engineering, civil engineering, food storage, additive manufacturing processes, pharmaceutical production lines, and mining and excavation industries among many others. LS-DEM has capabilities that exceed current techniques within engineering practice, enabling more accurate analysis of engineering designs, enhancing optimization of existing engineering processes, and reducing engineering costs both in terms of time and money. Additionally, the potential exists for large improvements in the safety of both existing and new infrastructure from the increased understanding of physical processes that this technology can provide. Overall, the proposed technology has the potential to be a transformative technology that positively impacts many commercial industries.This I-Corps project investigates potential commercial applications and markets for the Level Set Discrete Element Method (LS-DEM) technology. The intellectual merit of this method is to allow the rapid simulation and modeling of discrete objects with any shape, overcoming a major challenge within the field. Modeling of discrete objects is important in many commercial applications and shape is pivotal for correctly understanding systems. For example, spherical objects behave very differently than rectangular objects, yet current discrete methods are mostly limited to spherical approximations in large granular systems. This results in less accurate and less informative results that LS-DEM overcomes by effectively and exactly replicating any component's shape. LS-DEM has proven through past research to be highly accurate and predictive engineering tool. This work will investigate various commercial applications, where a better understanding of discrete object interactions can impact our engineering and scientific understanding of the system or systems in question.