The dynamics of dissipative soft-sphere gases obeys Newtons equation of motion which are commonly solved numerically by (force-based) Molecular Dynamics schemes. With the assumption of instantaneous, pairwise collisions, the simulation can be acceler
ated considerably using event-driven Molecular Dynamics, where the coefficient of restitution is derived from the interaction force between particles. Recently it was shown, however, that this approach may fail dramatically, that is, the obtained trajectories deviate significantly from the ones predicted by Newtons equations. In this paper, we generalize the concept of the coefficient of restitution and derive a numerical scheme which, in the case of dilute systems and frictionless interaction, allows us to perform highly efficient event-driven Molecular Dynamics simulations even for non-instantaneous collisions. We show that the particle trajectories predicted by the new scheme agree perfectly with the corresponding (force-based) Molecular Dynamics, except for a short transient period whose duration corresponds to the duration of the contact. Thus, the new algorithm solves Newtons equations of motion like force-based MD while preserving the advantages of event-driven simulations.
When granular systems are modeled by frictionless hard spheres, particle-particle collisions are considered as instantaneous events. This implies that while the velocities change according to the collision rule, the positions of the particles are the
same before and after such an event. We show that depending on the material and system parameters, this assumption may fail. For the case of viscoelastic particles we present a universal condition which allows to assess whether the hard-sphere modeling and, thus, event-driven Molecular Dynamics simulations are justified.
The coefficient of restitution of colliding viscoelastic spheres is analytically known as a complete series expansion in terms of the impact velocity where all (infinitely many) coefficients are known. While beeing analytically exact, this result is
not suitable for applications in efficient event-driven Molecular Dynamics (eMD) or Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. Based on the analytic result, here we derive expressions for the coefficient of restitution which allow for an application in efficient eMD and MC simulations of granular Systems.
If a tennis ball is held above a basket ball with their centers vertically aligned, and the balls are released to collide with the floor, the tennis ball may rebound at a surprisingly high speed. We show in this article that the simple textbook expla
nation of this effect is an oversimplification, even for the limit of perfectly elastic particles. Instead, there may occur a rather complex scenario including multiple collisions which may lead to a very different final velocity as compared with the velocity resulting from the oversimplified model.
