:: DEM Solutions Awarded NASA Contract to Develop Advanced Electrostatic Charged Particle Simulation Tool

DEM Solutions, a leading developer of discrete element modeling software solutions, today announces that it has been selected to team with scientists and engineers from NASA to develop a new modeling capability which adds electrostatic forces to the particle dynamic modeling capability already available within its core EDEM software suite. DEM Solutions will develop the models and software while NASA will provide the laboratory data and perform the model verification.

According to Dr Carlos Calle, Director of the Electrostatics and Surface Physics Laboratory at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center: "The expansion of the DEM technique to incorporate particle-particle and particle-surface electrostatic interactions will benefit the Exploration Mission Directorate by providing NASA with a powerful tool in the current development of the dust mitigation and characterization technologies which are underway at the Electrostatics and Surface Physics laboratory at KSC."

Dr. Peter Weitzman, Vice President of DEM Solutions (USA) Inc., added: "We are delighted to be selected to help NASA in design of equipment for space exploration. We also expect that the technology developed in this project will allow us to better serve the needs of our commercial clients who need to include electromagnetic effects in modeling of particulate solids handling and processing operations"

EDEMTM is state-of-the-art DEM (Discrete Element Method) modeling software uniquely designed to couple with other CAE tools and user-defined numerical models including fluid dynamics, electrical and magnetic forces, chemical kinetics and rigid body dynamics.