DEM analyses of the mechanical behavior of soil and soil-rock mixture via the 3D direct shear test

Abstract

The mechanical behavior of soil and soil-rock mixture is investigated via the discrete element method. A non-overlapping combination method of spheres is used to model convex polyhedron rock blocks of soil-rock mixture in the DEM simulations. The meso-mechanical parameters of soil and soil-rock interface in DEM simulations are obtained from the in-situ tests. Based on the Voronoi cell, a method representing volumtric strain of the sample at the particle scale is proposed. The numerical results indicate that the particle rotation, occlusion, dilatation and self-organizing force chains are a remarkable phenomena of the localization band for the soil and soil-rock mixture samples. The localization band in a soil-rock mixture is wider than that in the soil sample. The current research shows that the 3D discrete element method can effectively simulate the mechanical behavior of soil and soil-rock mixture.