Abstract
The incremental behaviour of crushable sands is investigated by means of a Discrete Element Method (DEM) based analogue. The DEM sample is subjected to a comprehensive set of small stress perturbations in the triaxial plane in order to identify the basic mechanisms contributing to the corresponding strain response. Three contributions to incremental strains are distinguished: elastic, plastic-structural and plastic-crushing. The behaviour observed appears to be consistent with the classic tenets of elasto-plasticity. It is also shown that high resolution probing is required to identify significant features such as elastic anisotropy and irreversible effects on the tangent bulk and shear moduli. As a consequence, computational efficiency is therefore a must for numerical studies of incremental response.
Highlights
Experimental studies of the incremental behaviour of granular materials involve very significant difficulties
The use of the discrete element method (DEM) numerical models is emerging as an alternative tool to advance the understanding of the incremental behaviour of granular materials
The elastic response of soils is generally anisotropic, but the complexity with which this anisotropy can be addressed is constrained by each particular testing program, [14]
Summary
Experimental studies of the incremental behaviour of granular materials involve very significant difficulties. Prior studies include the 2D work of Bardet [1] and later 3D contributions such as the work of [2], [3] While these contributions have provided useful information on the underlying constitutive behaviour of granular materials [4], they did not include the possibility of grain crushing. It is clear that, if the effect of grain crushing is of interest, the experimental difficulties mentioned above are significantly increased, as well as the relative advantages of numerical alternatives In this contribution, which follows [5], [6], the incremental strain response of a crushable sand is investigated numerically using stress probes on a 3D DEM analogue. When attention is focused on more advanced constitutive features, such as (i) the appearance of stress-induced elastic anisotropy and (ii) the effects of particle breakage and particle sliding on the stiffness evolution of the irreversible response, higher resolution probes where required
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