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Numerical investigation of the at-rest earth pressure coefficient of granular materials

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Abstract

The at-rest earth pressure coefficient, \(\hbox {K}_{0}\), is one of the most fundamental values for evaluating in-situ soil stresses and designing foundation. Research has been expanded to investigate the correlation between \(\hbox {K}_{0}\) and micro-scale characteristic of granular soils, beyond the macroscopic approach empirically correlated with internal friction angle. This study presents the evolution of \(\hbox {K}_{0}\) values of irregularly shaped natural sand, spherical shaped smooth and rough surfaced glass beads along with the stress history, estimated by the discrete element method. The surface roughness and non-spherical particles were emulated by inter-particle friction coefficient and the clumped particles. Results exhibit that the \(\hbox {K}_{0}\) during loading stage nonlinearly decreases with increasing values of friction coefficient and the assemblies with clumped particles present the lower values of \(\hbox {K}_{0}\) than spherical particle assemblies of the same friction coefficient. The varying friction coefficient seems enough to capture the evolution of \(\hbox {K}_{0}\) during loading, unloading and reloading cycles, while the natural sand inevitably requires the assembly with clumped particles to capture the experimentally observed \(\hbox {K}_{0}\) evolutions.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Korea CCS R&D Center (KCRC) grant and National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Korea government (MSIP) (No. 2012-0008929 and No. 2011-0030040).

Conflict of interest All funding sources for this study are listed in acknowledgement section of this paper. All figures in this paper have never been presented. The experimental data were obtained from the “Lee et al. [18] Assessment of \(\hbox {K}_{0}\) correlation to strength for granular materials”, as listed below. The terms of this arrangement have been reviewed and approved by the Yonsei University in accordance with its policy on objectivity in research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Yonsei University, Yonsei-ro 50, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, 120-749, Republic of Korea

    Tae Sup Yun & Junhwan Lee

  2. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332, USA

    Junghwoon Lee

  3. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA

    Jinhyun Choo

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  1. Tae Sup Yun
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  2. Junhwan Lee
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  3. Junghwoon Lee
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Correspondence to Junhwan Lee.

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Yun, T.S., Lee, J., Lee, J. et al. Numerical investigation of the at-rest earth pressure coefficient of granular materials. Granular Matter 17, 413–418 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10035-015-0569-x

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