ESSS Rocky DEM 4.3.0

The ESSS product team (part of CADFEM) is pleased to announce the availability of Rocky DEM 4.30. Building upon innovative multi-core and multi-GPU engines, Rocky DEM 4.3 expands its range of multiphysics particle-dynamics simulation with improved integration features and new models.

This latest release significantly expands ANSYS CFD–Rocky DEM integration capabilities, increasing speed of the coupled solution. It also introduces a new embedded, advanced coarse grain model (CGM) along with liquid film and liquid bridge representation. Improvements have also been made to the fiber model, including plastic deformation and discrete particle-breakage capabilities.

Several other productivity enhancements are present with this new release: unified particle and boundary collision statistics, new contact data visualization features, efficient particle volume initialization, and innovative OpenGL-based ray tracing post-processes for improved coating analysis. These capabilities bring Rocky DEM to an unprecedented level in terms of usage efficiency, accuracy and data analysis.

ANSYS CFD Integration Improvements

General Improvements
An innovative “single-fluid” approach speeds up the CFD–DEM coupled analysis by a factor of three, while new Lagrangian–Eulerian mapping captures sharply and consistently high-concentration liquid–particle interfaces. Users can increase physics fidelity by taking into account turbulence energy within fluid–particle interactions.

Coarse Grain Model (CGM)
Embedded, advanced CGM brings accurate particle scale-up when modeling fluid–particle problems that contain huge numbers of particles through an innovative particle “clustering” approach. Support for both CFD–DEM coupled particle upscaling as well as DEM-only analysis are available.


Liquid Film and Bridge Model
A new liquid film model considers the effects of liquid on a particle’s surface as well as its impact on particle interaction (collision damping, shear forces and adhesion) through liquid bridge representation. Rheological behavior and percolation phenomena can be simulated using this model.


Plastic Fiber Deformation

Rocky DEM’s new fiber model includes plastic deformation effects, anisotropy and an integrity failure model, which allow users to cover a wider range of fiber materials, in more complex equipment, with higher fidelity.
Discrete Breakage (available for fiber, shell and solid particles)

Discrete Breakage (available for fiber, shell and solid particles)


Expanding the unique breakage capabilities of Rocky DEM, release 4.3 brings a new high-fidelity breakage model (discrete breakage). This model capability considers the collision location at the particle’s surface along with its consequent internal stresses, capturing shape-dependent breakage and crack propagation.

Volume Filling Particle Initialization

Users can reduce by orders of magnitude initialization time when particle filling is required through a new “any shape” volume-filling feature. By providing a seed point and total mass, particles are placed side-by-side in a volumetric manner even when modeling high-packing zones, like soil beds.

Unified Particle and Boundary Collision Statistics

The feature-rich intra-particle collision statistics that Rocky DEM users rely on have been expanded for inter-particle and boundaries analysis. Collision frequency, locations, energy levels and losses information are available for all particle–particle and particle–boundaries interactions.

Contact Data Visualization and Post-Processing

Instantaneous contact data can now be visualized and post-processed, both through GUI and API. Thus, users can readily understand and analyze contact “network” in order to improve the whole particle system analysis.

Ray Tracing for Particle Coating Analysis

OpenGL-based post-processing enables fast and accurate ray tracing computation for processes like coating and sand blasting.

ROCKY DEM allows precise prediction of the particle behavior of granular and liquid systems by analyzing media flows, energy absorption rates and particle breakage. Wherever large quantities of particles and bodies are set into motion in bulk, mixing, slipping or flow processes regardless of their size, shape, material or adhesion, ROCKY can help to understand and improve the processes.

These are, on the one hand, measures for optimizing the movement of the mass, for example to minimize material losses or to prevent or suppress dust formation. On the other hand, the results provide important information for efficiently designing peripheral products, for example to increase the service life of conveyor belts and other components.

ROCKY DEM optimizes, among other things, agitator mills, SAG mills, crushers and high-pressure grinding rollers, the particle spectrum ranges from small synthetic parts such as tablets to gravel.

With ROCKY for ANSYS particle simulation can be extended with important structural and flow-mechanical information. These are achieved by a complete integration in ANSYS Workbench. The compact and user-friendly user interface of ROCKY for ANSYS ensures uncomplicated installation and operation. CAD geometries can also be imported easily and quickly.

Rocky DEM provides decisive insight into granular flow behavior with accurate particle representation.


ESSS. the largest engineering company in South America specializing in numerical simulations, ANSYS ELITE Channel Partner and TechNet Alliance member, joined CADFEM closely.

Product: ESSS Rocky DEM
Version: 4.3.0
Supported Architectures: x64
Website Home Page : https://rocky.esss.co/
Language: english
System Requirements: PC *
Supported Operating Systems: *
Size: 425.3 mb