Guest editorial

Citation

Feng, Y.T., Li, X., Tan, Y. and Ji, S. (2015), "Guest editorial", Engineering Computations, Vol. 32 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/EC-03-2015-0068

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Engineering Computations Volume 32, Issue 4

Computational particle-based methods provide unique and powerful numerical tools for modelling systems exhibiting discrete and/or discontinuous behaviour, such as granular materials. Such systems are highly heterogeneous, typically composed of voids and particles with different sizes and shapes. Geological matter, soil and clay, soil-rock mixture in nature, geo-structure, concrete, etc. are some practical examples.

From the mesoscopic view, granular materials can be naturally modelled as an assembly of discrete particles in contacts. On the other hand, a local region in the overall structure can be identified with a material point and the discontinuous medium could then be represented by an effective continuum at the macro-scale. In addition to the nature of this two distinct scales, granular matters also exhibit some properties including: random heterogeneity, polydispersity and non-periodicity of meso-structural topology and morphology of granular materials, and high nonlinearity due to multi-body contacts among a great number of particles as the evolution of the meso-structure of granular material. In dry, partially saturated and fully saturated granular materials, different types of inter-particle forces are involved and have to be properly taken into account. All these features impose many grand challenges, both theoretically and practically, to computational particle-based methods for modelling granular materials.

Significant progress has been made in the development of particle-based computational methods for granular materials in China over the last decade. This Special Issue contains 14 selected papers, presented in the First and Second Chinese National Conferences on Computational Mechanics of Granular Materials (CMGM), held, respectively, from 16 to 18 September 2012 in Zhang-Jia-Jie, and from 23 to 35 August 2014, in Lan-Zhou, China. We hope that the Special Issue would provide an up-to-date review of the most recent developments in China on computational mechanics of granular materials and related subjects.

Professor Y.T. Feng, Civil and Computational Engineering Centre, University of Wales Swansea, Swansea, UK

Professor Xikui Li, The State Key Laboratory of Structural Analysis for Industrial Equipment, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China

Professor Yuanqiang Tan, School of Mechanical Engineering, Xiangtan University, Hunan, China, and

Professor Shunying Ji, State Key Laboratory of Structural Analysis for Industrial Equipment, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China