Altair EDEM – DEM Simulation Software for Bulk and Granular Materials
Altair EDEM is the industry-leading software for simulating the behavior of bulk and granular materials using the Discrete Element Method (DEM). Whether you’re working with rock, ore, soil, powder, grain, or fiber — EDEM gives your engineers accurate insight into how materials interact with equipment under real operating conditions.
What Is the Discrete Element Method?
The Discrete Element Method (DEM) is a numerical simulation technique that models the behavior of individual particles and how they interact with each other and with surrounding equipment. Unlike continuum methods, DEM treats each particle as a separate entity — making it uniquely suited for simulating bulk solids, granular flows, and complex particle-fluid systems.
EDEM applies DEM to real-world engineering challenges: how does ore behave inside a rotating mill? How does soil react to an excavator bucket? How does powder flow through a pharmaceutical mixing process? These are questions that physical testing alone can’t answer cost-effectively — and that’s exactly where EDEM excels.
WHAT CAN YOU SIMULATE?
Applications Across Industries
EDEM is used globally wherever bulk or granular materials meet equipment. Key application areas include:
Mining & Minerals Processing Simulate ore behavior in crushers, mills, conveyor systems, and transfer chutes. Predict equipment wear, optimize throughput, and reduce costly downtime.
Heavy Equipment & Off-Highway Model how excavators, graders, and loaders interact with soil, gravel, and rock. Validate machine performance virtually before physical prototyping.
Agricultural Machinery Simulate crop, seed, and soil interactions with combine harvesters, tractors, and seeding equipment. Improve machine efficiency across varying material conditions.
Steelmaking Optimize blast furnace charging, minimize material segregation, and improve raw material handling from mine to plant.
Process Manufacturing Analyze mixing efficiency, tablet coating, powder flow, and granulation in pharmaceutical, food, and chemical processes
Simulate Millions of Particles — GPU-Powered Performance for Large-Scale DEM Simulations.
EDEM on Altair One
Altair EDEM is available through Altair One, giving your team cloud-based access to the platform without complex local installations. Combined with GPU-acceleration — including multi-GPU support — EDEM can scale simulations to billions of particles, making it practical for the most demanding industrial applications.
EDEM vs Physical Testing
The traditional approach to understanding bulk material behavior relies on physical testing — build a prototype, run material through it, measure the results, modify the design, and repeat. This process is expensive, time-consuming, and often reveals problems too late in the development cycle.
EDEM changes that workflow fundamentally. By simulating how particles interact with equipment in a virtual environment, engineers can evaluate dozens of design configurations before a single physical prototype is built. Material behavior, equipment wear, throughput efficiency, and load distribution are all visible in the simulation — not discovered on the test rig.
This does not mean EDEM replaces all physical testing. Validation testing still has its place, particularly for regulatory or certification purposes. But for design exploration, performance prediction, and process optimization, simulation dramatically reduces the number of physical iterations required — and the costs that come with them.
What Is Inside Altair EDEM
EDEM is built around three integrated components that take you from simulation setup all the way through to analysis and reporting:
Why Volupe for Altair EDEM?
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EDEM in a Multi-Physics Simulation Workflow
EDEM is designed to couple seamlessly with the leading CAE tools across simulation disciplines. This makes it a central component of an integrated engineering workflow rather than a standalone niche tool.
