The discrete element method was used to investigate the microscopic characteristics of granular materials under simple shear loading conditions. A series of simple tests on photo-elastic materials were used as a benchmark. With respect to the original experimental observations, average micro-variables such as the shear stress, shear strain and the volumetric dilatancy were extracted to illustrate the performance of the DEM simulation. The change of anisotropic density distributions of contact normals and contact forces was demonstrated during the course of simple shear. On the basis of microscopic characteristics, an analytical approach was further used to explore the macroscopic behaviors involving anisotropic shear strength and anisotropic stress-dilatancy. This results show that under simple shear loading, anisotropic shear strength arises primarily due to the difference between principal directions of the stress and the fabric. In addition, non-coaxiality, referring to the difference between principal directions of the strain rate and the stress, generates less stress-dilatancy. In particular, the anisotropic hardening and anisotropic stress-dilatancy will reduce to the isotropic hardening and the classical Taylor’s stress-dilatancy under proportional loading.
For coarse grained soils,their principal stress directions may change when the water level of embankment dam varies instantaneously.In this loading case,the principal directions of stress and strain rate will become non-coaxial.In an effort to model non-coaxial behavior,a modified three-dimensional non-coaxial model is developed in the context of vertex yield(tangent plasticity) theory.Discrete Element Method(PFC) incorporating user-defined interparticle contact models is also employed to gain an insight into microscopic mechanism of non-coaxiality.The analysis focuses on non-coaxial behaviors under simple shear condition.It has been shown that the proposed non-coaxial model gives good predictions for non-coaxiality with reference to microscopic observations while the classical coaxial model fails to simulate the non-coaxial behaviors.In general,non-coaxiality as a result of the rotation of principal stress,is large at a small shear strain,and inclined to become negligible with increasing shear strain.For coarse grained soils,their non-coaxiality tends to largely depend on the initial normal pressure,where a larger degree of non-coaxiality can be observed at a higher pressure.
QIAN JianGu 1,2,HUANG MaoSong 1,2 & SUN HaiZhong 1,2 1 Key Laboratory of Geotechnical and Underground Engineering of Ministry of Education,Tongji University,Shanghai 200092,China
