Abstract
This paper presents numerical simulations of high‐pressure biaxial tests on breakable granular soils with the discrete element method. The 2D setting is more economic in terms of computational cost, which allows simulation with a larger number of particles with a wider size distribution. The results of breakable and unbreakable agglomerates show that particle breakage has a significant influence on the macro‐ and micromechanical behaviors of the assembly. Higher confining pressure and larger axial strain result in the variation of particle grading and agglomerate numbers. The evolution of bond breakage during shearing makes it possible to trace the failure process and breakage mechanism at the microlevel. The breakage energy is found to account for a small fraction of total energy input compared with friction energy. A hyperbolic correlation between relative particle breakage and total energy input per unit volume was established regardless of the influence of confining pressure.
Highlights
Particle breakage frequently occurs in granular materials as the exterior energy acting on granular particle exceeds its strength.is phenomenon prevalently encountered in civil, petroleum, and mining engineering, such as crushing in end-bearing piles, rock-fill dams, oil wells, and mine construction [1,2,3,4,5]
Bolton et al [7] considered the changes in four components of work and energy during simulated tests on Discrete element method (DEM) agglomerates: δW, work input at the boundaries; δS, energy stored as elastic strain energy; δB, energy dissipated by breakage; and δF, energy dissipated by friction and damping due to the rearrangement of balls
The linear parallel bond model in PFC provides the following energy partitions: δW, work input at the test boundaries; δS, energy stored as elastic strain energy; δf, energy dissipated by frictional slip; and δd, energy dissipated by damping so that energy dissipated by breakage δB, can be obtained: δB δW − δS − δf − δd
Summary
Particle breakage frequently occurs in granular materials as the exterior energy acting on granular particle exceeds its strength. Grading change due to particle breakage has a great influence on the macroscopic behavior of a granular soil. From what have been investigated above, particle breakage is principally influenced by particle strength and effective stress state, especially at high pressures. Despite these considerable studies, the micromechanics of particle breakage in granular soils is not well understood because it is difficult to observe the Advances in Civil Engineering crack propagation, movement, and internal interaction at the particle level. E main purpose of this study is to simulate the process of particle breakage in high-pressure biaxial tests on sands with large amounts of particles, using PFC2D with the first method. Unbreakable agglomerates are examined in a parallel study to investigate the effects of particle breakage on the strength, dilatancy, and anisotropy
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