Abstract
The increasing interest in the effect of block morphological features on shear behaviors of the soil–rock mixture (S-RM) presents a challenge to robust numerical modeling considering the actual block morphology. This paper proposes an improved probabilistic method to generate stochastic virtual blocks considering the particle size effect on morphological features, based on principal component analysis (PCA) and probability density function, for establishing the S-RM discrete element method (DEM) models. The method is more reasonable and efficient compared to the previous study. The results show that the spherical harmonics (SH) can be used to accurately characterize the three-dimensional morphological features of the blocks scanned by computed tomography when the SH coefficient degree n reaches 17 and the mesh accuracy l equals 4. With the increase of the block particle size, the angularity of blocks increases, while the convexity and sphericity decrease. It verified that the morphological characteristics of the virtual blocks generated by the improved method follow those of natural ones at different scales, better than the previous method. The computation efficiency for generating blocks by the improved method was considerably enhanced compared to the previous study. The S-RM DEM models constructed by the generated virtual blocks can be directly used in further simulations to investigate the effect of block shape and size on the mechanical behavior of S-RM.
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The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the associate editors and anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions to improve the manuscript.
Funding
This work was supported by the Major International (Regional) Joint Research Project of the NSFC (No.42020104006) and the National Major Scientific Instruments and Equipment Development Projects of China (No.41827808).
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Appendices
Appendix 1. Abbreviations
- 3D:
-
Three-dimensional
- CT:
-
Computed tomography
- DEM:
-
Discrete element method
- PCA:
-
Principal component analysis
- SH:
-
Spherical harmonic
- S-RM:
-
Soil–rock mixture
- VBP :
-
Volumetric block proportion
- PDF:
-
Probability density function
Appendix 2. Symbols
- \(\overline{a }\) :
-
Normalization spherical harmonic coefficient
- \({{a}_{n}}^{m}\) :
-
SH coefficient
- c :
-
Mean vector of SH coefficient matrix
- Cv :
-
Convexity
- d :
-
Block particle size
- EA:
-
Surface area relative error
- EI:
-
Elongation
- EV:
-
Volume relative error
- l :
-
Mesh accuracy
- m,n:
-
Spherical harmonic order and degree
- Pnm(x):
-
Associated Legendre function
- q :
-
SH coefficient matrix formed by all blocks
- q c :
-
Centered SH coefficient matrix
- \(\widehat{q}\) :
-
Statistic generated SH coefficient
- p :
-
Number of principal components
- r(θ, φ):
-
Polar radius of the particle surface at θ and φ
- S :
-
Sphericity
- t :
-
Number of all scanned blocks
- u :
-
Score matrix of principal components
- v :
-
Eigenvectors matrix
- w :
-
Number of vertices contained in the mesh
- Ynm(θ, φ):
-
Spherical harmonic series
- θ, φ :
-
Polar angle and azimuthal angle of the spherical coordinates
- λ :
-
Eigenvalue
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Liu, C., Zhang, H., Hu, X. et al. A novel stochastic generation method of shale blocks in S-RM considering the particle size effect of morphological features. Bull Eng Geol Environ 82, 30 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-022-03032-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-022-03032-z