Verification of an automated work flow for discrete element material parameter calibration

Identification of parameter values for discrete element method (DEM) material models is a major issue for realistic simulation of bulk materials. Choosing suitable parameter values is often done using trial and error in a disorganized manner, where efficiency largely depends on the experience of the DEM user. A methodical work flow, which is based on Latin hypercube sampling, Kriging and numerical optimization, was composed with open-source software. The calibrated DEM materials were subsequently validated against the physical data from measurements and the number of required DEM simulations was recorded to assess the effectiveness of the overall method. The simulation results were within a few percent of the desired experimental values after an average of 14 DEM runs. Disadvantageous boundary conditions, like a wide factor value range or the optimum being located at an edge, did not considerably influence the quality of the results.