Effects of shape and size polydispersity on strength properties of granular materials
Name
PhysRevE.91.032203.pdf
Size
2.03 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
8db346f1394383c151006a80a3fa94f4
Author(s)
Nguyen, Duc-Hanh
Azema, Emilien
Sornay, Philippe
Radjai, Franck
Date Issued
March 2015
Journal
Physical Review E
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
Nguyen, Duc-Hanh et al. “Effects of Shape and Size Polydispersity on Strength Properties of Granular Materials.” Physical Review E 91.3 (2015).
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
By means of extensive contact dynamics simulations, we analyze the combined effects of polydispersity both in particle size and in particle shape, defined as the degree of shape irregularity, on the shear strength and microstructure of sheared granular materials composed of pentagonal particles. We find that the shear strength is independent of the size span, but unexpectedly, it declines with increasing shape polydispersity. At the same time, the solid fraction is an increasing function of both the size span and the shape polydispersity. Hence, the densest and loosest packings have the same shear strength. At the scale of the particles and their contacts, we analyze the connectivity of particles, force transmission, and friction mobilization as well as their anisotropies. We show that stronger forces are carried by larger particles and propped by an increasing number of small particles. The independence of shear strength with regard to size span is shown to be a consequence of contact network self-organization, with the falloff of contact anisotropy compensated by increasing force anisotropy.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Terms of Use
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Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.91.032203
