https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202124906009
Independence of shear strength with particle size dispersity still valid in polyhedral particle assemblies
1
LMGC, Université de Montpellier, CNRS, Montpellier, France
2
Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), Paris, France
3
Department of Civil, Geological and Mining Engineering, Polytechnique Montréal, Québec, Canada
4
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand
* e-mail: emilien.azema@umontpellier.fr
** e-mail: david.cantor@polymtl.ca
*** e-mail: itthichai_p20@hotmail.com
Published online: 7 June 2021
A very staggering result that has been constantly highlighted in granular media is that the shear strength of granular assemblies is independent of the particle size dispersity. In other words, a packing composed of monodisperse particles has similar strength properties to those of polydisperse systems. This has been shown numerically for the simplified case of disc and polygon assemblies in 2D and spheres in 3D. In this paper, we use three-dimensional contact dynamics simulations to revisit these results for the more complex case of assemblies composed of highly polydisperse rigid polyhedra. Although non-spherical shapes induce more intricated spatial correlations than spherical shapes because of the multiple contact types (i.e., vertex-face, edge-edge, edge-face, face-face), our numerical data provide evidence that the shear strength independence as the particle size dispersity increases still holds up for assemblies of polyhedra. We explain this finding from compensation mechanisms at the micro-scale between geometrical and mechanical anisotropies developed within the assemblies.
A video is available at https://doi.org/10.48448/7vv4-9279
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2021
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.
