Abstract
The minimum void ratio is an important parameter for evaluating soil properties. It is closely related to the compressive properties, permeability, and shear strength of soil, and it is affected by particle size distributions and particle shapes. However, existing research generally focuses on modeling the minimum void ratio with the effect of particle size distributions, ignoring the influences of particle shapes on the minimum void ratio. This paper analyzes the influences of particle size distributions and particle shapes on the minimum void ratio using four types of sand and alternative materials. The experiments showed that the minimum void ratio first decreased and then increased with the increase of the fines content. The minimum void ratio reached a minimum value when the proportion of fines content was approximately 40%. The more irregular the particle shapes, the more complicated the contact between particles, the more the void existed between the particles, and the larger the minimum void ratio. Based on the experimental data, a relational model between the minimum value of the minimum void ratio and the particle sizes ratio was derived with binary mixtures of different particle sizes and shapes. This proposed model required only one parameter T, which was closely related to the sphericity of the particles, to predict the minimum value of the minimum void ratio with various fines contents. The experiment results showed that the predicted value was very close to the actual measured value.
Highlights
According to the experimental data, the relationship between the average particle sizes of the particle group and emin is shown in Figure 3. e average particle sizes of each particle group were calculated by taking the average values of the upper and lower grain diameters of the group
Each group of sand obtained from the screening experiment was not of a certain particle size but rather lay within a particle size range, and the pores between the coarse particles were filled with fine particles. erefore, the larger the particle size and the larger the difference
Since the steel balls were of a certain particle size and there was no filling with each other, the void between the spherical particles and the inner wall of the compaction bucket became larger with the increase of the particle sizes, which led to a slight increase in the emin
Summary
As an important parameter reflecting the particle size distribution of soil in geotechnical engineering, the minimum void ratio (emin) is closely related to the compressive properties, permeability, and shear strength of soil. E Furnas model [20] is only suitable for estimating the packing density of binary powder compacts, and it has not yet been examined for use with the packing density of sand-silt mixtures with different particle sizes. It is generally accepted that another important factor is particles shapes, which affect emin factor and affect the shear resistance of granular soils. Scholars have mainly studied the effect of particle size distributions on emin of soils and proposed corresponding analytical methods to predict emin for soil mixtures.
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