Advancing front packing of polygons based on Minkowski sum

Abstract

It is an important research topic to study the mechanical properties of rockfill from a meso-level perspective using numerical methods. And the formation of initial set of rockfill particles, represented by polygons/polyhedrons, is a key step in numerical simulation. Advancing front algorithm is an efficient formation algorithm, the locus in it is designed to determine the position of a new particle. We found Minkowski sum and locus polygon can be transformed into other. There are a few of research on locus polygon, but a lot of researches on Minkowski sum, so Minkowski sum algorithms can be used to enrich advancing front algorithm. Therefore, advancing front packing algorithm for polygons based on Minkowski sum is proposed, which can obtain a random initial packing of polygons efficiently and can achieve a higher area fraction.