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DEM modeling of shear bands in crushable and irregularly shaped granular materials

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Abstract

A method of modeling convex or concave polygonal particles is proposed. DEM simulations of shear banding in crushable and irregularly shaped granular materials are presented in this work. Numerical biaxial tests are conducted on an identical particle assembly with varied particle crushability. The particle crushing is synchronized with the development of macroscopic stress, and the evolution of particle size distribution can be characterized by fractal dimension. The shear banding pattern is sensitive to particle crushability, where one shear band is clearly visible in the uncrushable assembly and X-shaped shear bands are evident in the crushable assembly. There are fewer branches of strong force chains and weak confinement inside the shear bands, which cause the particles inside the shear bands to become vulnerable to breakage. The small fragments with larger rotation magnitudes inside the shear bands form ball-bearing to promote the formation of shear bands. While there are extensive particle breakages occurring, the ball-bearing mechanism will lubricate whole assembly. With the increase of particle crushability the shear band formation is suppressed and the shear resistance of the assembly is reduced. The porosity inside the shear bands are related to the particle crushability.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51322905, 51509190, and 51579193).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering Science, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, China

    Wei Zhou, Lifu Yang, Gang Ma, Kun Xu, Zhiqiang Lai & Xiaolin Chang

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  1. Wei Zhou
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Correspondence to Gang Ma.

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Zhou, W., Yang, L., Ma, G. et al. DEM modeling of shear bands in crushable and irregularly shaped granular materials. Granular Matter 19, 25 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10035-017-0712-y

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