To explore the microscopic responses of granular materials to wetting,the inter-particle lubrication effect and particle breakage in an odometer were simulated using a two-dimensional discrete element method.The lubrication effect was modeled by reduction of the inter-particle friction coefficient and particle breakage was initiated by decreasing the particle strength.Once the strength of the particles decreased to a threshold value,the particles began to break so that new contacts could be established to transfer the external loads.Numerical simulations successfully reproduced the additional compaction of the material and the intensification of the horizontal stress in addition to the microscopic responses of the granular assemblies.The microscopic interpretation of the earth pressure coefficient at rest and the evolution of the grain number distribution during particle breaking were also investigated.
The strength-dilatancy characteristics of frictional materials embraced in the hypoplastic model proposed by Gudehus and Bauer are investigated and compared with the revised model suggested by Huang.In the latter the deviatoric stress in the model by Gudehus and Bauer is replaced by a transformed stress according to the stress transformation technique proposed by Matsuoka.The flow rule,the failure state surface equation and the strengthdilatancy relationship embraced in both models are derived analytically.The performance of the two hypoplastic models in reproducing the relationship between the peak strength and the corresponding dilation rate under triaxial compression,plane compression and plane shearing are then extensively investigated and compared with experimental results and with the predictions made by particular classical stress-dilatancy theories.Numerical investigations show that the performance in reproducing the strength-dilatancy relationship is quite satisfactory under triaxial compression stress state in both models and the predictions made by the transformed stress based model are closer to the results obtained from classical stress-dilatancy theories for plane compression and plane shearing problems.
Long-term deformations of rockfill dams can be related to the type of dam,the pre-compaction achieved during the construction of the dam,the history of loading events,the rheological properties of the rockfill material used,the seepage behavior caused by defects of the sealing,the interactions of the dam building with the foundation,and the hydrothermal phenomena of the stressed rockfill material.The present paper investigates the theological propcrtics of coarse grained rockfill materials using a hypoplastic constitutive model.Particular attention is paid to wetting deformation under different deviatoric loading states and pre-compactions.To quantify the state of weathering a so-called“solid hardness”is used in the sense of a continuum description.It is shown that an appropriate modeling of wetting deformations requires a unified description of the interaction at least between the state of weathering,the stress state,the density and the rate of deformation.The results obtained from the numerical simulations are compared with available experimental data for a rockfill material used in Xiaolangdi earth dam.
