A numerical investigation of the incremental behavior of crushable granular soils

The mechanical behavior of granular materials is characterized by strong nonlinearity and irreversibility. These properties have been differently described by a variety of constitutive models. To test any constitutive model, experimental data relative to the nature of the incremental stress–strain r...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Ciantia, Matteo Oryem|||0000-0003-1897-4471, Arroyo Álvarez de Toledo, Marcos|||0000-0001-9384-9107, Calvetti, Francesco, Gens Solé, Antonio|||0000-0001-7588-7054
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2016
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Repositorio:UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/99535
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2117/99535
https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/nag.2503
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Granular materials--Mathematical models
discrete element method
granular materials
incremental nonlinearity
crushing
stress probing
Materials granulars
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Enginyeria civil::Geotècnia::Mecànica de sòls
Descripción
Sumario:The mechanical behavior of granular materials is characterized by strong nonlinearity and irreversibility. These properties have been differently described by a variety of constitutive models. To test any constitutive model, experimental data relative to the nature of the incremental stress–strain response of the material is desirable. However, this type of laboratory data is scarce because of being expensive and difficult to obtain. The discrete element method has been used several times as an alternative to obtain incremental responses of granular materials. Crushable grains add one extra source of irreversibility to granular materials. Crushability has been variously incorporated into different constitutive models. Again, it will be helpful to obtain incremental responses of crushable granular materials to test these models, but the experimental difficulties are increased. Making use of a recently introduced crushing model for discrete element simulation, this paper presents a new procedure to obtain incremental responses in discrete analogs of granular crushable materials. The parallel probe approach, previously used for uncrushable discrete analogs, is here extended to account for the presence of crushable grains. The contribution of grain crushing to the incremental irreversible strain is identified and separately measured. Robustness of the proposed method is examined in detail, paying particular attention to aspects such as dynamic instability or crushing localization. The proposed procedure is later applied to map incremental responses of a discrete analog of Fontainebleau sand on the triaxial plane. The effect of stress ratio and granular state on plastic flow characteristics is highlighted.