Several processes in nature as well as many industrial applications involve static or dynamic granular materials. Granulates can adopt solid, liquid or gas like states and thereby reveal intriguing physical phenomena not observable in its versatility for any other form of matter. The frequent occurrence of phase transitions and the related characteristics thereby strongly affect their processing quality and economics. This situation demands for prediction methods for the behavior of granulates. In this context simulations provide a feasible alternative to experimental investigations. Several different simulation approaches are applicable to granular materials. The time-driven Discrete Element Method turns out to be the most complex but also as the most general method. The method has been used in a wide variety of scientific fields for more than thirty years. With the tremendous increase in available computer power, especially in the last years, the method is more and more developing to the state of the art simulation technique for granular materials. Despite of the long time of usage, model advances and theoretical and experimental studies are not harmonized in the different branches of application, providing potential for improvements. Therefore, the scope of this paper is a review of methods and models based on theoretical considerations and experimental data from literature. Through model advances it is intended to contribute to a general enhancement of techniques, which are then directly available for simulations.

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