Mpacts provides Discrete Element Method (DEM) simulation software designed to model and predict industrial processes involving particulate materials. The platform accurately represents arbitrary particle shapes and supports custom damage modeling to analyze material failure. It facilitates complex system design through two-way coupling with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and rigid-body constraints for machinery interactions.
Funding
Funding not disclosed
Founders
Product
Problem
Industrial processes that handle particulate materials—such as conveyors, hoppers, mixers, cyclones, and tablet presses—are difficult to predict with conventional CFD tools because particle shape, contact mechanics, and breakage behavior are not captured accurately. This limits designers’ ability to optimize equipment, ensure product quality, and reduce trial‑and‑error testing.
Solution
Mpacts delivers a high‑performance Discrete Element Method (DEM) simulation platform that models the full physics of particulate systems. The software can represent any particle geometry, from simple spheres to complex polyhedra, fibers, sheets, and deformable vesicles, preserving surface roughness and material stiffness. Built‑in damage and breakage models predict fracture onset and allow the simulation to continue with fragments, while a two‑way CFD coupling exchanges drag forces and flow fields between particles and fluid. Rigid‑body constraints let users assemble machines with rotational and translational links, enabling fast, integrated simulations of entire process lines. Variability tools generate stochastic ensembles to capture tolerances in particle properties and machine dimensions, producing statistically robust performance metrics. A Python/C++ API lets engineers extend the core solver with custom models, scripts, or high‑speed kernels, and all results are exported for downstream analysis.
Target Audience
Primary users are process engineers, R&D teams, and simulation specialists in bulk‑handling, pharmaceutical, mining, and chemical industries, as well as academic researchers studying granular media and multiphase flows.
Features
- Arbitrary shape representation for rigid and deformable particles (spheres, cylinders, polyhedra, capsules, fibers, sheets, vesicles) with exact surface geometry
- Damage/breakage models with support for user‑defined fracture criteria and automatic fragment generation
- Two‑way DEM‑CFD coupling that synchronizes particle motion and fluid flow, enabling realistic fluidized‑bed and slurry simulations
- Rigid‑body constraint system for defining linked machine components with translational and rotational joints, optimized for high‑speed execution
- Variability engine that samples material properties, tolerances, and particle distributions to produce ensembles of simulations and statistical output reports
- Extensible Python and C++ API for custom user modules, allowing integration of proprietary physics or optimization algorithms
- High‑performance solver architecture that scales to large particle counts while maintaining numerical stability