Visualization of a Sheared Suspension of Ellipsoids

This demonstration illustrates the motion of a suspension of ellipsoidal objects under shear. The simulation is based on a dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) algorithm written at NIST. The DPD program determines the viscosity of the suspension as a function of shear rate and particle size and shape distribution. It is currently being modified to determine yield stress.

The numerical simulation was done by Nicos Martys with parallel programming support by Jim Sims. The graphics conversion of the resulting data to Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) was done by Steve Satterfield. Use of VRML allows the visualization to be widely distributed to anyone with access to the internet.

This demonstration should run on any machine with a VRML browser. It has been tested using Netscape and the CosmoPlayer plug-in on both SGI workstations and Windows PCs. Note that the down load is fairly quick. However, once the down-load has completed, expect your browser to appear to hang up for 2 to 5 minutes depending on the speed of your machine. It has been successfully run on a 133MHz Pentium with 64MB memory and a low end graphics card.

To start the full demo of all objects click here.

In addition to the full demo, it is possible to animate a single object or see the full path of a single object.

For a demo of a single object animation click here.
For a demo of the full path of a single object animation click here.

For additional information, contact the authors at nicos.martys@nist.gov, steve.satterfield@nist.gov, jim.sims@nist.gov.
 
 

Credit also goes to the following NIST researchers for their contributions to this project:

Clarissa Ferraris, Building Materials Division.
Terence Griffin, Scientific Applications and Visualization Group;
Robert Lipman, Building Environment Division;