A Discrete Element Method (DEM) model is developed to study the particle break- age effect on the one-dimensional compression behavior of silica sands. The 'maximum tensile stress' breakage criterion considering m...A Discrete Element Method (DEM) model is developed to study the particle break- age effect on the one-dimensional compression behavior of silica sands. The 'maximum tensile stress' breakage criterion considering multiple contacts is adopted to simulate the crushing of circular particles in the DEM. The model is compared with published experimental results. Com- parison between the compression curves obtained from the numerical and experimental results shows that the proposed method is very effective in studying the compression behavior of silica sands considering particle breakage. The evolution of compression curves at different stress levels is extensively studied using contact force distribution, variation of contact number and particle size distribution curve with loading. It is found that particle breakage has great impact on com- pression behavior of sand, particularly after the yield stress is reached and particle breakage starts. The crushing probability of particles is found to be macroscopically affected by stress level and particle size distribution curve, and microscopically related to the evolutions of contact force and coordination number. Once the soil becomes well-graded and the average coordination number is greater than 4 in two-dimension, the crushing probability of parent particles can reduce by up to 5/6. It is found that the average contact force does not always increase with loading, but increases to a peak value then decreases once the soil becomes more well-graded. It is found through the loading rate sensitivity analysis that the compression behavior of sand samples in the DEM is also affected by the loading rate. Higher yield stresses are obtained at higher loading rates.展开更多
基金Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Nos.50909057,51208294 and 41372319)the Innovation Program of Shanghai Municipal Education Commission(No.15ZZ081)the Innovation Project of Shanghai Postgraduate Education(No.20131129)
文摘A Discrete Element Method (DEM) model is developed to study the particle break- age effect on the one-dimensional compression behavior of silica sands. The 'maximum tensile stress' breakage criterion considering multiple contacts is adopted to simulate the crushing of circular particles in the DEM. The model is compared with published experimental results. Com- parison between the compression curves obtained from the numerical and experimental results shows that the proposed method is very effective in studying the compression behavior of silica sands considering particle breakage. The evolution of compression curves at different stress levels is extensively studied using contact force distribution, variation of contact number and particle size distribution curve with loading. It is found that particle breakage has great impact on com- pression behavior of sand, particularly after the yield stress is reached and particle breakage starts. The crushing probability of particles is found to be macroscopically affected by stress level and particle size distribution curve, and microscopically related to the evolutions of contact force and coordination number. Once the soil becomes well-graded and the average coordination number is greater than 4 in two-dimension, the crushing probability of parent particles can reduce by up to 5/6. It is found that the average contact force does not always increase with loading, but increases to a peak value then decreases once the soil becomes more well-graded. It is found through the loading rate sensitivity analysis that the compression behavior of sand samples in the DEM is also affected by the loading rate. Higher yield stresses are obtained at higher loading rates.