Simulation and visualization of 3D particle cloud electrodynamics

A numerical algorithm simulating the electrodynamics of many-particle systems is presented. This algorithm requires solution of the 3-D Poission equation for charge conservation using the boundary integral equation method, and integration of the dynamical equations of motion for discrete interacting particles. Motion of the particles is due to both Coulomb forces and Stokes's drag. Particles suffer elastic collisions with walls and each other. A scatter-gather method together with the use of influence coefficient matrices allowed two-order-of-magnitude speedups in computation compared to direct integration methods. The simulation is implemented within a user interface on a minisupercomputer to enable interactive steering of solution parameters and dynamic visualization of results. Sample solutions for xerographic development of image pixels are discussed.<
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