A mesoscopic model for compression of granular materials

Abstract

The design of protective structures often requires numerical modeling of shock-wave propagation in the surrounding soils. Properties of the soil such as grain-grading and water-fraction may vary spatially around a structure and among different sites. To better understand how these properties affect wave propagation we study how the meso-structure of soils affects their equation of state (EOS). In this work we present a meso-mechanical model for granular materials based on a simple representation of the grains as solid spheres. Grain-grading is prescribed, and a packing algorithm is used to obtain periodic grain morphologies of tightly packed randomly distributed spheres. The model is calibrated by using experimental data of sand compaction and sound-speed measurements from the literature. We study the effects of graingrading and show that the pressures at low strains exhibit high sensitivity to the level of connectivity between grains. At high strains, the EOS of the bulk material of the grains dominates the behavior of the EOS of the granular material.