FE-investigations of a deterministic and statistical size effect in granular bodies within a micro-polar hypoplasticity

Abstract

The paper deals with numerical investigations of a deterministic and statistical size effect in granular bodies during shearing of an infinite layer under plane strain conditions and free dilatancy. For a simulation of the mechanical behavior of a cohesionless granular material during a monotonous deformation path, a micro-polar hypoplastic constitutive was used which takes into account particle rotations, curvatures, non-symmetric stresses, couple stresses and the mean grain diameter as a characteristic length. The proposed model captures the essential mechanical features of granular bodies in a wide range of densities and pressures with a single set of constants. To describe a deterministic size effect, the calculations were carried out with an uniform distribution of the initial void ratio for four different heights of the granular layer: 5, 50, 500 and 2,000 mm. To investigate a statistical size effect, the distribution of the initial void ratio in infinite granular layers was assumed to be spatially correlated. As only primary stochastic calculations were performed, single examples of different random fields of the initial void ratio were generated. For this purpose a conditional rejection method was used.