CCC-ParaSolS officially started on the 1st of January, 2025, with the aim of creating an overarching community open to all UK-based scientists and engineers from academia and industry with a common interest in simulating particulate solids for a variety of applications. So now that we are just over a year into the project it is a good time to summarise what has been achieved in the past year.
Engaging the Community
In the first months, the website and LinkedIn profile were created, and a mechanism to join the community was established. Various activities were undertaken to grow the community to its current size of just over 100 members. Existing discipline-specific networks with a strong DEM interest were contacted, and CCC-ParaSolS was promoted through various channels.
An introductory webinar was given in March 2025 on Teams. Since then, we have continued to promote CCC-ParaSolS at conferences and events, aiming in particular to diversify the community demographics, e.g., introducing CCC-ParaSolS to a largely industry audience as part of a NAFEMS webinar in October.
We will continue to engage the community and attract new members through events such as the upcoming CCC-ParaSolS mini-symposium at UK ACM 2026.
In the future, our recently launched Discourse discussion forum will provide another platform to communicate within the community.
The following charts show some details about the community make-up and we have managed to capture a wide variety of members from various fields and sectors. These members also have a broad range of experience in terms of careers and with regards to HPC usage.
Delivering Training
CCC-ParaSolS has held three highly successful hybrid Network Events, encouraging the participation of early-career members at all by reimbursing the participation expenses of in-person attendees.
The first Network Event took place in May 2025 in Edinburgh over three days, and featured a mix of invited presentations, facilitated workshops, panel sessions, networking opportunities, and training on the use of three open-source DEM codes (LAMMPS, MercuryDPM and YADE) delivered by code developers. Almost 40 people attended the event in person with others joining online.
The second three-day Network Event took place in Oxfordshire in October 2025. This included presentations and group discussions on varied topics, and two days of training delivered by experts from EPCC on the use of HPC with ARCHER2 as an exemplar, and running a DEM simulation on ARCHER2 with LAMMPS. This Network Event attracted ~25 in-person attendees and 5–10 online attendees each day.
The third Network Event was a two-day event and took place in Manchester in January 2026. This event was focused on the use of AI in the simulation of particulate solids and had a series of presentations from researchers and practitioners in the fields of AI/ML. The training portion of the event focused on automated calibration by machine learning frameworks and an introduction to the topic of Deep Learning. Again, there was a strong community turnout with just over 30 members in attendance and several more joining online.
Technical Support for the Community
Key decisions made within CCC-ParaSolS have been informed by the entire community. Through various questionnaires and discussions with the Advisory and Management Committees, CCC-ParaSolS identified a high-priority code development project to focus on by soliciting suggestions from the community and ratifying one proposal to proceed with at the second Network Event.
The selected project entails adding GPU capabilities to the MercuryDPM code via the OPS library. Code benchmarking cases are also being developed in CCC-ParaSolS as the other technical focus, complementing benchmarking activities being undertaken in the ON-DEM COST Action with which many community members are engaged.
Five-year Vision for the Community
Particulate solids simulations provide insights into the behaviour of complex granular systems. They have great potential to enable waste reduction and improved efficiency in manufacturing processes, contributing to the UK’s net zero goals and economic prosperity, and reduce risks to life, exacerbated by our rapidly changing climate, caused by mass movement of soil or rock.
However, multiple challenges must be overcome to fully realise this potential for economic and societal benefit in the UK. Code developments are essential to exploit modern hybrid computing architectures efficiently and derive performance gains from the integration of mechanistic solvers with physics-informed AI. The physical models underpinning the simulation codes require additional development to capture the complexity of real-world particulate processes quantitatively and reliably for all applications. Rigorous verification, validation and benchmarking require high-quality data which are often lacking.
The roadmap to solution has two strands. Firstly, CCC-ParaSolS will promote and accelerate the sustainable development of a suite of high-performance, validated and scalable open-source codes for particulate solids simulations, able to efficiently exploit the current and emerging computing architectures found within the UK’s DRI. In 2026, GPU capabilities will be added to the MercuryDPM code with CoSeC support. Targeted developments over the next five years will improve the physical models underpinning the simulation codes.
Secondly, CCC-ParaSolS will democratise (i) adoption of these open-source codes, (ii) utilisation of HPC, and (iii) uptake of best practices among members in topics related to particulate solids simulations. This will primarily be through the delivery of bespoke training that meets the needs of a diverse and multi-disciplinary community.
As a national hub, CCC-ParaSolS will also raise awareness of these simulation techniques among decision-makers and in education.
