dynamic simulation, solids/fluids Options

[DegelmanRD]

Hi everyone, I just registered today in hopes of having some questions answered.

I'll be popping in over the next few weeks but just want to get a quick heads-up on the PhysX plugin. I am looking for a piece of software that can simulate a pretty specific situation but am not sure where to start!
I'll briefly describe the situation here and once I get a chance to organize some details I will post more information.

Picture a large rectangular tank to be filled with some material. The floor of the tank is essentially a feed mechanism to move the material toward the rear of the tank. At the rear of the tank there is another mechanism which projects the material outward.
My question is this: can the plugin roughly simulate the area covered by the material as it is projected from the machine? It doesn't need to be perfectly accurate, but I'm looking for a rough idea of where the material could end up given different conditions.
Another bonus would be to simulate how the material acts while it is in the tank, and how a piece of debris may affect the mechanisms.

Sorry this is so vague but I don't have much time right now...I'll be in tomorrow to provide specifics, links, and hopefully models if anyone wants to tackle this. But for the moment I'd be happy if someone told me I was looking in the right place even!

Thanks!

[DegelmanRD]

I was hoping to have some models ready to upload but it looks like that will have to wait for a bit.
The material in question is manure...here's some links to better explain what I'm talking about. We don't have numbers yet regarding density and all that, but we're working on testing different types & moisture content, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXZYmnR4x6A
http://www.degelman.com/index.php?p=Manure...20Coming%20Soon

We're concerned with different beater designs at the rear of the machine; if we could simulate this action it would save tons of time vs building a physical prototype and testing it manually.
Data on beater RPM & floor speed are available, as well as testing data from the current design (spread pattern, etc).

We have plenty of information, please ask if you need anything else and I'll try to get models on our FTP next week. We use Solidworks primarily but can export to STL/IGES/etc...is there a preferred file format?

[DegelmanRD]

If anyone has insight into this (or other software better suited to the task) I'd love to hear it; alternatively, if somebody wanted to do a proof-of-concept we'd be interested in checking it out...if it looks promising we'd have reason to snag a couple licences and contract some work.