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Evaluation of the dynamic behavior of cemented granular soil by the three-dimensional discrete element bonded contact model

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Abstract

In the present study, the three-dimensional discrete element method bond contact model is developed to evaluate the dynamic behavior of cemented granular soil. In this model, the empirical relations between the dynamic properties of the bonded contact model, cement content, water/cement ratio, minimum bonded particle diameter, and bond height are derived by a series of microscale cyclic experiments on ideal bonded particles. The ability of the proposed bonded contact model to predict the dynamic behavior of cemented soils is evaluated by discrete element simulations of drained cyclic triaxial tests on cemented specimens with different cement contents (1, 2, and 3%) and water/cement ratios (0.3, 0.6, 0.9, 1.2, and 1.5) under various confining pressures (100, 300, and 500 kPa). To validate the discrete element simulations, cyclic triaxial experiments are conducted on the mentioned samples. A comparison between numerical and experimental results reveals that the bonded contact model can accurately simulate the dynamic behaviors of cemented granular materials (an increasing trend of damping ratio and a decreasing trend of shear modulus for samples with shear strain). Increasing the cement content (decreasing the water/cement ratio) increases the shear modulus of the samples and decreases their damping ratio at all shear strain levels. Microscopically, the increases in cement content and water/cement ratio increase the initial number of bonded contacts. The cement content, water/cement ratio, and confining pressure control the contact force magnitude. The diagonal shear bands observed in simulated samples agree with other experimental findings.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Shahid Beheshti University, P.O. Box 16765-1719, Tehran, Iran

    Nazanin Mahbubi Motlagh, Ahmad-Reza Mahboubi Ardakani & Ali Noorzad

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  1. Nazanin Mahbubi Motlagh
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  2. Ahmad-Reza Mahboubi Ardakani
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  3. Ali Noorzad
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Mahbubi Motlagh, N., Mahboubi Ardakani, AR. & Noorzad, A. Evaluation of the dynamic behavior of cemented granular soil by the three-dimensional discrete element bonded contact model. Comp. Part. Mech. 10, 1843–1857 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40571-023-00593-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40571-023-00593-y

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