The effect of Triple Particle sizes on the mechanical behaviour of granular materials using Discrete element method (DEM)

Abstract

Granules are used in various industries such as medicine and agriculture, and their behavior is influenced by the characteristics of the constituent particles. The Discrete Element Method (DEM) is a technique for characterizing the mechanical behavior of granular materials by building a mechanical model that describes the impacted parameters, including particle shape, which is being one of these parameters. As a result, the discrete element method is applied to investigate the macro-and micro-mechanical shear behavior of granular materials. For this study, a gravitational disposition for geometrical arrangement model has been used to model various triple particle sizes for a direct shear test using (EDEM®), which is a three-dimensional (3D) program based on (DEM). Different triple particle sizes were used to create an assembly. The results revealed that the size index affected the relationship between shear strength, angular velocity, dilation, coordination number (CN), and volumetric strain.

Keywords

• discrete element methods
• direct shear test
• granular materials
• triple particle shape