[HN Gopher] NeuralDEM - Real-Time Simulation of Industrial Parti...
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       NeuralDEM - Real-Time Simulation of Industrial Particulate Flows
        
       Author : lnyan
       Score  : 54 points
       Date   : 2024-11-15 10:56 UTC (7 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (nx-ai.github.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (nx-ai.github.io)
        
       | londons_explore wrote:
       | This is nice, but I believe a simpler design could work better.
       | 
       | Simply make a model which transforms a 3d section of an image to
       | an embedding vector. Make another model which can reverse the
       | process (ie. encoder-decoder). Do that for every tile of a
       | starting state.
       | 
       | Make an 'upscale' and 'downscale' model which can take a grid of
       | embedding vectors and return a new vector representing the whole.
       | 
       | Then make an 'advance time' model, which takes an embedding
       | vector and advances time by a given number of
       | seconds/microseconds/days.
       | 
       | Now train all the models end to end to ensure that all
       | combinations of upscaling/downscaling/advancing/encoding/decoding
       | produce similar outputs to traditional physics models.
       | 
       | Use an ensemble of models or a sampling scheme to find places
       | where outputs do not closely match, and insert more training data
       | from the physical simulation at those points.
        
       | Azrael3000 wrote:
       | Some previous work by some of the same people [0] where I was
       | taking part in. Seems like this is a significant step up from the
       | previous work including a novel idea that resolves quite a few
       | issues we had. Love to see that.
       | 
       | [0]: https://ml-jku.github.io/bgnn/
        
       | szvsw wrote:
       | Interesting. I wonder what parts of this approach could be
       | adapted to DEM models of solids. For those unaware - even though
       | DEM is naturally chosen for fluids, depending on how you
       | configure the force laws between particles you can easily model
       | solids as well, where each particle is essentially a chunk of
       | material. There are then some interesting choices to make about
       | (a) what kind of lattice you set the initial particles up in, and
       | (b) how you tune the force flaws to get the macroscopic
       | properties you want around stiffness, etc and (c) if you use
       | multiple "types" of particles forming a composite etc.
        
         | Azrael3000 wrote:
         | I'm sorry, but DEM is not for fluid simulation. It's used to
         | simulate granular materials by default. Also the hopper
         | discharge that is shown does not contain any fluid. The fluid
         | is usually modeled using a different tool (e.g. using the
         | finite volume method) which is then coupled to the particles.
        
           | szvsw wrote:
           | Okay, fair, I was using fluid loosely (and inaccurately) to
           | mean both granular and fluid behavior. But there's nothing
           | inherently incompatible between fluid dynamics and the
           | discrete element method as far as I am aware, just like there
           | is nothing inherently incompatible with solids. Sure SPH or
           | LBM or FVM are the more traditional choices for fluids and
           | computationally more tractable in most cases, but they aren't
           | necessarily "more right."
           | 
           | Awesome paper on how powerful particle based methods can be:
           | 
           | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187775032.
           | ..
           | 
           | And a fun image of a DEM solid model of fracture:
           | 
           | http://www.cba.mit.edu/media/DEM/index.html
        
             | Azrael3000 wrote:
             | No worries. I would still consider these methods to be very
             | different from each other. SPH, FVM and so on are methods
             | to discretize continuum equations. If you have a continuum
             | equation that describes your granular material you can use
             | them and DEM kind of interchangeably. But often times such
             | continuum equations do not exist for granular media or they
             | break down in certain flow regimes. DEM on the other hand
             | is not based on the continuum representation. Instead it is
             | based on interaction forces that originate from particles
             | being close by. While it might be possible to link these
             | two, afaik nobody has done this, but I'm no longer active
             | in the field.
        
               | szvsw wrote:
               | Take a look at the paper I linked, specifically section
               | 4, which illustrates finding force laws to match the
               | desired dynamics of a real physical material (in this
               | case, Delrin, including elastic and plastic deformation.
               | 
               | I guarantee you will like this paper!
        
       | al_th wrote:
       | Interesting work.
       | 
       | Given, the recent noise around this paper
       | https://arxiv.org/pdf/2407.07218 about "weak baselines" in ML x
       | CFD work, I wonder how it resonates with this specific work..
       | 
       | I am not super familiar with DEM, but I know that other particle
       | based model such as SPH benefit immensely from GPU acceleration.
       | Does it make sense to compare with a CPU implementation ?
       | 
       | Besides, the output of the NeuralDEM seems to be rather coarse
       | fields, correct ? In that sense, and again I'm not an expert of
       | granular models so I might be entirely wrong, but does it make
       | sense to compare with a method that is under a very different set
       | of constraints ? Could we think about a numerical model that
       | would allow to compute the same quantities in a much more
       | efficient way, for example ?
        
         | Azrael3000 wrote:
         | Regarding your questions, yes, DEM also benefits a lot from GPU
         | acceleration. So you can compare it to a CPU based code, but
         | obviously there's an order of magnitude you can gain via GPU.
         | 
         | Usually you are not interested in the fine fields anyways.
         | Think of some fine powder in a big process, where there are
         | trillions of real particles inside. You can't and don't want to
         | simulate that. Mostly you are interested in these course
         | quantities anyways and getting statistical data, so for that
         | there's no need for the fine resolution.
         | 
         | Regarding the numerical model that can compute these things in
         | a more efficient way, they don't always exist. When you move to
         | large numbers of particles you can sometimes go to continuum
         | models, but they might not always behave as the real thing, as
         | it's really difficult to find governing equations for such
         | materials.
        
         | sps44 wrote:
         | I haven't heard of this paper, very interesting read! Thank you
         | for bringing it up here. Resonates very well with the (little)
         | experience I have from playing around with CNN-based surrogate
         | models years ago.
        
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