A dem investigation of the effect of particle-size-distribution on one-dimensional compression

Abstract

For granular soils subjected to many thousands of per cents of shear strain, a critical grading was also found at which no possible further particle breakage occurred. The critical grading can be plotted as a straight line in the double-log scale, thus indicating a power-law distribution with a fractal dimension D = 2.57. Altuhafi and Coop conducted an oedometer test on granular soils artificially prepared with critical grading (CG in Fig. 1) and did not observe significant particle breakage for these soils; rather, the particle surface roughness was, instead, reduced. In this work, DEM simulations using the PFC3D version 4.0 were conducted. Assemblies of spherical particles with different particle size distributions but no particle breakage were subjected to one-dimensional (1D) compressions.