A new particle simulator to analyze the behavior of carrier beads around a magnet roll in a two-component developer unit in electrophotography has been developed. The simulator, which is based on the Discrete Element Method, including the magnetic interaction force among particles in a magnetic field, adopts parallel processing with MPI and/or OpenMP. Parallel processing of the particle simulator with several processors provides excellent performance to simulate the behavior of a realistic amount of particles in a practical time. The simulation results obtained for tens of thousands of carrier beads reveals not only realistic particle behavior around a magnet roll but also the quantitative relation between the stress on the carrier and the amount of carrier beads that passes through a gap between the doctor blade and the magnet roll. These are very important parameters to obtain high-quality images in a two-component developer unit.
Takahiro Watanabe, "Numerical Simulation of Carrier Behavior Around a Magnet Roll in a Two-Component Developer Unit in Electrophotography" in Proc. IS&T Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies (NIP21), 2005, pp 578 - 581, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2005.21.1.art00063_2