A DEM bonded particle model compatible with stress/strain constitutive relations

Abstract

The Discrete Element Method (DEM), also known as distinct element method, is mainly used to study divided media such as granular materials. Moreover, DEM is also widely used for modeling non-linear discontinuous phenomena in rock materials and ceramics such as fragmentation, crack initiation, crack propagation or diffuse cracking. These phenomena are often studied with the Bonded Particle Model (BPM) thanks to the ability of the bond to break in order to simulate a discontinuity in the material. Among the literature, many bonded particle models exist and the choice of the most suitable model remains difficult. Furthermore, these models require fastidious calibration steps because the input bond parameters do not correspond to the whole mechanical response of the DEM assembly. This article introduces a new approach that enables the direct usage of stress–strain laws without calibration steps. Here, these laws directly come from already implemented constitutive laws available in a finite element code. The ability of the proposed software architecture to deal with complex material behaviors (anisotropy, damage and plasticity) is investigated. The obtained results are quite close to the expected ones. This work demonstrates the ability of the proposed approach to deal with such complex mechanical problems which are very challenging to tackle with standard DEM-BPM models.