C12 - Collision Processes in Rows of Spheres

Benchmark C12 Collision Processes in Rows of Spheres is based on a continuous mechanical model with collision events, but mainly concentrates on discrete events within the movement of the spheres – on the collision of the spheres. The benchmark tries to analyse the phenomena of collisions, from elastic to plastic, or inelastic, resp. The tasks of the benchmark – the experiments to be performed with the model – require determination of collision sequences depending on the collision type (between elastic and inelastic), boundary value problems for initial hits, analysis of the number of collisions and of final velocities of the spheres, and stochastic analysis for stochastically modelled collisions strength. The primarily given equations are linear and can be solved analytically, so that colli-sion times are known in advance – and an event-oriented approach is possible. But more realistic nonlinear equations require full state event handling.

This benchmark is a classical educational benchmark: demonstration of basic mechanical phenomena, various implementation possibilities because of simple linear equations, and statistically driven experiments – mainly for beginners. Interestingly, all implementations have to compensate numerical problems cause by too small slopes for determining the collisions.