DEM simulation

Hi,

I’m working in a firm which is participating to a project on AM technologies. We would like to perform a DEM simulation but we are not familiar with this kind of modelling.

We would like to simulate the compaction of a powder bed for the SLM additive manufacturing technology. The model should take into account a thin (30-60um) loosely packed layer of particles and consider a vibration with different frequency and amplitude and analyse the powder density after a certain time of application of this vibration.
The substrate can be modelled as a squared box made out of steel.
The powders should be modelled with a gaussian distribution with a mean diameter around 20-30um, the material would be aluminium in a first instance, simultaneous contacts should be allowed (so, soft spheres approach?).
The model should consider the effect of heat given by the platform of the bed and a series of IR lamps, which I suppose can be modelled as an external heat source.
The final density of the layer should be the final output of the model to be used after to model the layer as a continuum in a FEM simulation. I don’t need a huge number of particles modelled but I would like to have a reasonable model of the real process, in the order of magnitude of mm would be maybe enough.
The particles should be modelled as spherical, I guess the contact between them could be elastic.
In the model the heat radiation could be neglected.

Are you familiar with simulations like this? Do you offer consult in those kind of problems?

Thanks for your attention,
Kind regards,