Shortcomings of Existing Scan Line Void Fabric Tensors

Abstract

Fabric of granular materials is related to the statistical distribution of orientation of different microstructural vector-like entities based on the solid or the void phase. Due to difficulties associated with the accurate representation of the solid structure and in particular contact normal vectors, void fabric appears today as simpler to quantify within the current laboratory techniques for granular media, such as X-ray CT, and thus is of particular interest. Void fabric tensors can be determined by image-based quantification methods of voids, which are well de-fined and easy to apply to both physical and numerical experiments. Such a promising void fabric characterization approach is based on the scan line method originally proposed by Oda et al. [1]. In this work, existing scan line void fabric anisotropy tensors definitions are proven analytically to inherit serious shortcomings and, thus, should be modified for future use; such modifications are proposed and verified in Theocharis et al. [2] and briefly stated herein.