Evolution characteristics of calcareous sand force chain based on particle breakage

Abstract

Calcareous sand is easily broken under external force, which brings great difficulties to island reef engineering. Based on the particle flow program, a discrete element model that can reproduce the results of laboratory tests is established, the large principal stress method is introduced to identify the particle force chain, and the bond strength between particles is increased to obtain an unbreakable model with the same initial conditions, and different confining pressures are compared and analyzed. The evolution law of the force chain of the following two models establishes a macro-meso cross-scale analysis in the deformation process of calcareous sand, explores the internal mechanism of the crushing of calcareous sand particles. The results show that particle breakage plays an important role in the evolution of the force chain. Particle breakage will reduce the probability of the force chain on both sides of the axis, forcing the probability of the axial force chain to rise steadily. The macroscopic deviatoric stress is the external manifestation of the probability of the axial force chain on the meso level. The faster the probability of the force chain in the direction of the potential shear band increases, the more obvious the shear band is.

Keywords

• calcareous sand
• particle breaking
• particle force chain
• particle flow