LIGGGHTS compute contact/atom command

Submitted by domenico on Thu, 06/23/2016 - 12:39

Hi everyone, I have a question.
The command compute contact/atom define a computation that calculates the number of contacts for each atom in a group.

The contact number is defined for finite-size spherical particles as the number of neighbor atoms which overlap the central particle, meaning that their distance of separation is less than or equal to the sum of the radii of the two particles.

For spherical particles, all with the same diameter, the maximum contact number should be 6, but I've got also 7,8 or 9 contacts. Is it possible?

Thank you very much fro you attention. I hope someone can clarify my doubt.

richti83's picture

richti83 | Thu, 06/23/2016 - 13:25

It's possible because of the overlap in DEM. Imagine that that the corner particles can also overlap the central particle. For a (compressed) state I would asume 3^3-1=26 possible contacts when every sourounding particle overlaps the central particle.

I'm not an associate of DCS GmbH and not a core developer of LIGGGHTS®
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