Particle shape effects on dynamic properties of granular soils: A DEM study

Particle shape is an essential aspect of granular soils that affects their mechanical properties. It is challenging to isolate the effect of particle shape from other mechanical properties such as inter-particle friction coefficient and particle shear modulus in laboratory tests. The discrete element method (DEM) makes it feasible to investigate the effect of macroscopic and mesoscopic particle morphologies including sphericity and roundness. This study provides a systematical DEM investigation of the particle shape effect on the dynamic properties of granular soils by simulating cyclic undrained triaxial tests at various initial confining pressures and void ratios. The results indicate that specimen consisting of angular particles generally exhibit a higher secant shear modulus G than that of rounded particles. Additionally, particle shape has no significant effect on modulus ratio G/G0 but a noticeable impact on damping ratio D at relatively large strains due to dilatancy. A weighted coordination number CN' was proposed to reveal the microscopic effect of particle shape on G0. Contact sliding was found to be the main cause of modulus degradation and damping increase with increasing shear strain. The tangential shear modulus ratio Gtan/G0 is inversely correlated to the weighted contact sliding ratio fs'.