The Study of the Patterns of Soil Contact with a Solid Surface

Abstract

The ability of some soil grains to move relative to others makes them look like liquids. At the same time, each particle of a granular medium, taken separately, has all the properties of a solid body. These particles form a granular body capable of absorbing external compressive loads, which makes granular bodies look like solids. In the article, considering soils as a dispersed, discretely isotropic medium (granular system), theoretically, by modeling the contact of soil particles with a solid smooth surface, the area of actual contact at various levels of convergence is established. At the same time, reference curves for the contact of various sands were established using their relative magnitude. For five types of sands, contact characteristics were determined depending on their density. For clay, loam and sandy loam, the dependence of the relative actual contact area on the plasticity number is determined. At the same time, in the range 0.25 ≤ Ip ≤ 0.75, analytical dependences for sandy loam, loam and clay of the relative actual contact density on the plasticity number Ip were determined.