Research on representation of particle size distribution for standard sands

Abstract

The determination of favorite engineering indexes which are sufficient and necessary to reflect particle size distribution (PSD) is a key issue to bridge micro to macro behaviors of granular materials. Focusing on the continuous gradings, standard sand is selected as a representative, and the data of six typical sands is firstly collected to establish a database of PSD. Secondly, the cumulative central beta distribution is adopted to describe grading curves of particles due to its greater flexibility and fewer parameters, and the physical validation of its parameters is analyzed further. Six combinations of five engineering indexes are respectively applied to calculate the parameters of cumulative central beta distribution. The deviation between the analysis results and the observed data is evaluated. The study reveals that mean particle size D50 and coefficient of uniformity Cu are the most proper combination to describe PSD and can be used to link the PSDs to micro-macro mechanical responses.