Abstract
Utilizing Discrete Element Modeling (DEM), we investigate the shear strength properties and microstructure of 2D granular mixture composed of various regular polygonal particles (from triangle to icosagon and disk) under biaxial compression. Three cases were considered: 1) increase of proportion and angularity started from disk (S1); 2) increase of proportion by decreasing the angularity started from triangle (S2); 3) increase of proportion by random angularity started from disk (S3) and polygons (S4). The results show that the shear strength changes with the mean angularity. On the other hand, the packing fraction slightly varies with the mean angularity. At the microscopic scale, the granular texture in term of the force, the contacts transmitted the force higher than the average force (strong force) are oriented in the direction of externally applied loading but they represent only 40% of the total number of contacts. Besides, the tangential contact forces direction tend to be consistent with the maximum shear strength direction.
Highlights
Granular materials in nature are composed of a mixture of particles with different sizes, shapes and properties
Utilizing Discrete Element Modeling (DEM), we investigate the shear strength properties and microstructure of 2D granular mixture composed of various regular polygonal particles under biaxial compression
The results show that the shear strength changes with the mean angularity
Summary
Granular materials in nature are composed of a mixture of particles with different sizes, shapes and properties (such as density, friction, and elasticity). A well-known example is the particle size distribution of rock aggregates in concretes, which performances and workability were optimized by proportion[4]. The particle shape distribution of the granular mixture was studied, such as mechanical behavior and packing properties. Many kinds of particle shapes were found in everyday life and industry, for instance, angularity, roundedness, elongation or platy-ness and nonconvex shapes. These properties are used to characterize the particle shapes[6,7,8,9,10,11]. Binary mixtures of two shapes have been very investigation[12,13], such as segregation behavior or the strength properties, while the effect of multiple particle shapes remains still poorly investigated. Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd state in term of shear strength and packing fraction at the macroscopic scale, and force transmission at the microscopic scale
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