3D scan line method for identifying void fabric of granular materials

Abstract

Among other processes measuring the void phase of porous or fractured media, scan line approach is a simplified “graphical” method, mainly used in image processing related procedures. In soil mechanics, the application of scan line method is related to the soil fabric, which is important in characterizing the anisotropic mechanical response of soils. Void fabric is of particular interest, since graphical approaches are well defined experimentally and most of them can also be easily used in numerical experiments, like the scan line method. This is in contrast to the definition of fabric based on contact normal vectors that are extremely difficult to determine, especially considering physical experiments. The scan line method has been proposed by Oda et al [1] and implemented again by Ghedia and O’Sullivan [2]. A modified method based on DEM analysis instead of image measurements of fabric has been previously proposed and implemented by the authors in a 2D scheme [3-4]. In this work, a 3D extension of the modified scan line definition is presented using PFC 3D® . The results show clearly similar trends with the 2D case and the same behaviour of fabric anisotropy is presented.