https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201714002017
FEM modeling of the sandpile dip effect
1 Materials Engineering Department, Centro Federal de Educação Tecnológica de Minas Gerais, CEFET-MG, Av. Amazonas 5651, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil. CEFET-MG.
2 Departamento de Física e Matemática, Centro Federal de Educação Tecnológica de Minas Gerais, CEFET-MG, Av. Amazonas 7675, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil.
3 National Institute of Science and Technology for Complex Systems, INCT-SC – CEFET-MG.
* e-mail: isadora.cota@gmail.com
** e-mail: diego.so2@hotmail.com
*** e-mail: atman@dppg.cefetmg.br
Published online: 30 June 2017
Previously, it was shown that the pressure “dip” in the stress profile observed at the bottom of sandpiles prepared by successive avalanches can be related with the skewness effect observed inthe stress response of sheared granular layers to a localized vertical overload. Here, we present a FEM study of the sandpile dip effect using an alternative geometry (“wagon”) to build the pile, considering a simplified anisotropic elastic model, with an orthotropy angle. We explore the effect of different boundary conditions and grid coarsening on numerical stress response profiles. Our results indicate that the wagon geometry combined with partially fixed boundary condition may describe better experimental results than the conical geometry, a remark which can contribute for better comprehension of this effect.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2017
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
