Micromechanical behavior of granular materials under monotonic loading: Numerical simulation using discrete element method

Dr. Thallak Sitharam 1 and Dr. Norikazu Shimizu 2 Associate Professor and 2Professor, Department of Civil Engineering Yamaguchi University, Tokiwadai 2-16-1, Ube 755-8611, JAPAN Email: sitharam@rock.civil.yamaguchi-u.ac.jp shimizu@rock.civil.yamaguchi-u.ac.jp
1

INTRODUCTION Engineering behavior of soils is conveniently being expressed in terms of continuum parameters such as stress and strain even though soil is essentially a particulate system. There has been a great effort in the recent past towards establishing stressstrain relations based on principles of continuum mechanics with the ultimate objective of solving boundary value problems in geomechanics. The continuum mechanics models have been largely extended to be suitable for pressure dependent behavior of particulate systems such as soils. However these continuum models do not offer complete physical insight into the behavior of granular materials. Due to its inherent granularity, some features of sand behavior are difficult to understand or model from continuum mechanics principles. An alternative approach that offers a better understanding of granular materials is to treat the material as an assemblage of particles interacting through contact forces. Significant attempts have been made in the recent years in this direction to describe the response of granular materials from micromechanical approach (Chang et al., 1997). Development of numerical tools such as Discrete Element Method (DEM) by Cundall and Strack (1979), which can handle interaction of particles, has made it possible to derive detailed microscopic information and to study the evolution of various microparameters during loading. In this paper, results of monotonic biaxial shear tests on uniformly graded 2-dimensional assembly of 1000 discs under drained conditions are presented. MICROPARAMETERS It is now well recognized that shearing results in a reorientation of the fabric with an anisotropic distribution of contacts and contact forces and that the applied stress is transmitted by the formation of strong `contact chains' in the direction of the major principle stress. Thus, the changes in the applied stresses can be related to the changes in the internal fabric and force distributions in the medium. The internal parameters that describe the state of the assembly are in general recognized to be: the number of contacts or contact density (or alternatively average coordination number, i.e. average number of contacts per particle), contact normals and contact vectors and their spatial or directional distributions, contact forces - normal and tangential, and their distributions, etc. Several researchers (Mehrabadi et al., 1993; Rothenburg, 1980) have tried to relate the macroscopic quantities of stress and strain to the microparameters analytically by averaging techniques based on statistical methods. In the present work the behavior of granular materials under monotonic loading under drained conditions will be examined in terms of these micro parameters. NUMERICAL TESTING PROGRAMME Numerical simulations of two-dimensional disc assemblies are carried out using the modified DISC program (Sitharam, 1991). Program DISC is based on Discrete

element method, which is a numerical technique for analyzing the behavior of granular systems treating it as an assemblage of grains which can freely make or break contacts with their neighbors. Assemblies of 1000 two-dimensional discs of 20 different sizes (varying between 15-35 units) with a log normal particle size distribution are used for simulations. Each disc and contact have prescribed properties of radius, density, normal and tangential contact stiffness and coefficient of interparticle friction. Numerical values for density, stiffness and damping coefficients have been selected such that overlaps are small in relation to particle sizes that the numerical process is stable. In these 2-d simulations, no attempt has been made to relate the units to physical units. Values of these parameters are given in Table 1. Suitable mass and contact damping are used to achieve conditions close to static equilibrium. The disc particles are generated in a random manner in accordance with pre-set particle size, gradation and packing criteria to represent the soil mass. Then the sample is compacted isotropically and then the sample is sheared. During the shearing process, each particle is free to move or rotate in response to the local stress conditions and in accordance with inter-particle friction criteria. Initially, the assembly is generated using a random number generator that places non-overlapping discs of desired sizes corresponding to a desired distribution at random x-y locations within a specified circular region. A circular boundary is preferred to avoid stress concentrations at corners. Table 1. Input parameters selected for numerical simulation Properties Normal Stiffness Shear Stiffness Damping Coefficients Density of Discs Critical Time Step Coefficient of Friction Cohesion
Symbols Values Used

Kn Ks and t c

1.5 x 109 2.5 x 109 1.5 x 109 2.5 x 109 4.0 and 0.01 2000 0.45E-03 0.5 0.0

Two types of samples, loose and dense, were used. Loose sample is created by isotropically compacting the initially generated assembly to a specified stress level. While compacting the specified coefficient of friction (=0.5) was assigned to all particle contacts to generate a loose state of the assembly. However, for creating dense samples, the assembly was compacted keeping the contact friction () value zero, and subsequently equilibrated with the actual value of contact friction (=0.5). This equilibration amounted to some sort of unloading from a dense state (as the initial coefficient of friction of zero resulted in very dense packing). The loose and dense samples subjected to an isotropic stress of 2 x 106 stress units are shown in Figs. 1 and 2 respectively. The thickness of the lines indicates the magnitude of the contact force in the system. Corresponding area void ratio of loose and dense samples was 0.266 and 0.19 respectively. Monotonic biaxial shear tests were performed on these samples under drained conditions. Due to lack of space, undrained tests (constant volume tests) performed on these samples are not reported here. Starting with the isotropically stressed system, biaxial drained shear tests were performed by keeping the lateral pressure constant and a constant strain rate is applied in the vertical direction as in the

conventional triaxial tests. These tests were carried out to sufficiently large shear strains of 15- 20%.

Fig 1. Loose assembly of 1000 discs at 2 x 106 isotropic boundary stress

Fig 2. Dense Assembly of 1000 discs at 2 x 106 isotropic boundary stress

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS The results of monotonic, drained biaxial shear tests on both loose and dense samples are presented in figure 3 [deviatoric stress= (( 1 3 ) 2 ) ; deviaotoric strain= ( 1 3 ) ]. The laboratory triaxial experimental results of Been et al., (1991) showing a typical drained behavior of loose and dense sands are presented for comparison in Fig 4. It is very clear form the results that the loose disc assemblage shows volumetric compression while the dense sample shows significant dilation. The loose assemblage of discs shows monotonically increasing shear strength with strain, while the dense sample shows a steep rise in strength initially up to the peak which then decrease for further strains. The macro level responses under different conditions are in agreement with the established trends in the experiments.

Fig 3. Monotonic biaxial shear test results of loose and dense assemblages of discs

Fig 4. Typical drained monotonic of behavior of loose and dense sands (after Been et al., 1991)

Fig 5. Average Coordination number in a loose

Fig 6. Average coordination number in a dense sample

The plots of the coordination number versus deviatoric strain for loose and dense systems obtained during these numerical simulations are presented in figures 5 and 6 respectively. In case of loose sample, the coordination number is almost constant in spite of volumetric compression. This indicates that there is loss of contacts due to shearing even in this loose sample, which is compensated by the increase in contacts due to volumetric compression. For the dense sample there is a steep drop in the coordination number due to volumetric dilation. But we observed that there is a significant increase in the value of average contact force in the dense system, which results in an increasing mean pressure, in spite of steep drop in number of contacts. Typical plots of the polar diagrams of contact normal normals (first column of figs) and contact normal force (middle column of figs) and contact shear force distributions (last column of figs) at different stages of loading (at 0%, 2.5%, 5% and 10% deviatoric strains) are presented for loose and dense assembly in Figs. 7 and 8 respectively. A quantitative estimation of the evolution of these micro parameters is necessary to finally describe the macroscopic behavior. The equations presented by Rothenburg and Bathurst (1989) are used here for this purpose. It has been shown that for plane assemblies of circular discs, the contact normal and force distributions can be approximated with sufficient accuracy by Fourier series expressions of the form, for representing the distribution of contact normals, contact normal forces and contact shear forces, respectively: E ( ) = 21 [1 + a cos 2( o )] (1)
f n ( ) = f o 1 + a n cos 2 f f t ( ) = f o [a t sin 2( t )]

)]

(2)

(3) Where, f o is the average contact normal force over all the contacts, o , f , t are the principal directions of the contact anisotropy, contact normal force, and contact shear force anisotropies respectively. a, a n , a t are constants, which fit the three Fourier series, and reflect the extent of anisotropy in each case. It is well understood that a is deviatoric invariant of a symmetric second order tensor describing the distributions of contact normal orientations and o is the eigenvector of this tensor. This understanding leads to a simple analytical technique to calculate a and o from contact

orientation data (Rothenburg and Bathurst, 1989). The determination of a, o (or a n , f or a t , t ) can be carried out using the relations such as:
2

E ( ) cos 2 d = a cos 2 o 2

and

E ( )sin 2 d =
0

a 2

sin 2 o .

(4)

After obtaining these anisotropic parameters, the original distribution has been fitted with these equations and the smooth curve in Figures 7 and 8 represents the distribution obtained by these equations. These numerical experiments clearly shows that these micro parameters are quantifiable even for loose and dense systems which define the essential features of microstructures such as induced anisotropy in contact orientations and contact forces. Such observations were confirmed even for undrained tests (constant volume tests) on loose and dense assemblies, which are not reported here due to lack of space. From here, one can easily obtain relationship between forces and fabric to a macroscopic stress as shown by Rothenburg and Bathurst (1989). Figures 7 and 8 show how anisotropy development is taking place in the assembly with increase in deviatoric strain. Fig 7 shows for the loose sample, the anisotropy in contact normals, contact normal forces and shear forces increase monotonically with strain in drained test. For dense sample also the anisotropy in contact orientation increases monotonically (see fig 8), but the contact normal and shear force anisotropies show an early mobilization and then decreases. The development of anisotropy in contact orientation is also much faster in dense sample than in loose sample. It can be seen that the magnitude of contact shear forces is very small when compared to that of the contact normal forces. From drained and undrained tests on loose and dense assemblies, we have observed that, these anisotropy coefficients have limiting value at large strains for a given assembly however, the average normal contact force increases/decreases with a corresponding increase/decrease in average coordination number. CONCLUSIONS The trends of numerical results obtained compare quite satisfactorily with the experimental results. The 2-D analysis presented here give a qualitative picture of the micromechanical behavior of granular media in a monotonic drained test. Numerical results of loose and dense systems indicate that the essential features of microstructure can be quantified by anisotropy coefficients, using Fourier series functions. REFERENCES
Been, K., Jefferies, M.G., and Hachey, J. (1991) The critical state of sands, Geotechnique, 41, No.3, pp.365-381. Chang, C.S., Anil Misra, Liang R.Y., (1997) Mechanics of deformation and flow of particulate materials: Proceedings of the symposium sponsored by engineering mechanics division of ASCE, (Editors). Cundall, P.A., and Strack, O.D.L. (1979), A discrete numerical model for granular assemblies, Geotechnique 29, No.1, 47-65. Mehrabadi, M.M., Loret, B., Nemat-Naseer, S., (1993) Incremental constitutive relations for granular materials based on micromechanics, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 441, 443-463. Rothenburg, L. (1980), Micromechanics of granular materials, A Ph.D. thesis submitted to University of Carleton, Ottawa, Canada. Rothenburg, L., and Bathurst, R. J. (1989), Analytical study of induced anisotropy in idealised granular materials, Geotechnique, 39, No. 4, pp. 601-614. Sitharam G. T. (1991), Numerical simulation of hydraulic fracturing in granular media, Ph.D. thesis, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 303 pp.

Fig 7. The directional distributions of contact normals, average contact normal forces and average contact shear forces during a drained test on loose assemblage of discs at a) 0% b) 2.5% c) 5% and d) 10% deviatoric strains

Fig 8. The directional distributions of contact normals, average contact normal forces and average contact shear forces during a drained test on dense assemblage of discs at a) 0% b) 2.5% c) 5% and d) 10% deviatoric strains