The history of Applied DEM begins with the company Overland Conveyor Company, Inc from Lakewood, Colorado. Overland Conveyor is an engineering consulting firm with the primary focus of serving the mining industry in the design and analysis of long-distance underground and overland belt conveyors. The design and analysis of high-performance and space-efficient transfer chutes became a significant part of Overland Conveyor’s business.
Transfer chutes are a challenging component of belt conveyor systems due in part to the difficulty of characterizing material conditions and behavior in various conveyor configurations. Transfer chutes required more effective analysis tools than those which were available in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. It was for this reason that Overland Conveyor teamed with a pioneer of discrete-element modeling (DEM) technology in academia and through that partnership Chute Analyst™ was developed. Overland Conveyor continues to market Chute Analyst™ to the mining industry for transfer chute applications.
Recognizing that there were a number of applications that Chute Analyst™ wasn’t intended to analyze, Overland Conveyor again teamed with the developer of the technology behind Chute Analyst™. Bulk Flow Analyst™ was developed as a general-purpose tool to address material flow applications existing frequently outside the realm of belt conveyors.
Applied DEM is a company formed in 2003 as a subsidiary of Overland Conveyor Company, Inc. to bring Bulk Flow Analyst™ to users designing particulate material flow systems in agriculture, food processing, chemical and pharmaceutical processing, construction, manufacturing, and other industries
