Influence of polydispersity on micromechanics of granular materials

M. Reza Shaebani, Mahyar Madadi, Stefan Luding, and Dietrich E. Wolf

Phys. Rev. E 85, 011301 – Published 3 January 2012

Abstract

We study the effect of polydispersity on the macroscopic physical properties of granular packings in two and three dimensions. A mean-field approach is developed to approximate the macroscale quantities as functions of the microscopic ones. We show that the trace of the fabric and stress tensors are proportional to the mean packing properties (e.g., packing fraction, average coordination number, and average normal force) and dimensionless correction factors, which depend only on the moments of the particle-size distribution. Similar results are obtained for the elements of the stiffness tensor of isotropic packings in the linear affine response regime. Our theoretical predictions are in good agreement with the simulation results.

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Received 11 July 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.85.011301

Authors & Affiliations

M. Reza Shaebani^1,*, Mahyar Madadi^2,3,†, Stefan Luding^4,‡, and Dietrich E. Wolf¹

¹Department of Theoretical Physics, University of Duisburg-Essen, D-47048 Duisburg, Germany
²Department of Applied Mathematics, The Research School of Physics and Engineering, The Australian National University, Canberra 0200, Australia
³Department of Exploration Geophysics, Curtin University, P.O. Box U1987, Perth, WA 6845, Australia
⁴Multi Scale Mechanics (MSM), CTW, UTwente, P.O. Box 217, NL-7500 AE Enschede, Netherlands

^*reza.shaebani@uni-due.de
^†mahyar.madadi@curtin.edu.au
^‡s.luding@utwente.nl

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Vol. 85, Iss. 1 — January 2012

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