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Linking shape and rotation of grains during triaxial compression of sand

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Abstract

Particle shape has a strong effect on the mechanical response of coarse soils. This has been usually observed examining specimen-scale or engineering-scale responses, which are the sum of many microscale interactions. In this work we observe the effects of particle shape directly at the microscale level. X-ray tomography (μ-CT) of two sand specimens is exploited to measure three-dimensional particle shape descriptors but also to track individual particle motions during triaxial compression. A discrete digital volume correlation algorithm is employed to track the motion of individual grains (around 50,000 for each sand specimen) during the test and measure, with good precision, their cumulated displacements and rotations. The specimens examined failed in a clearly localised shear mode. Advantage is taken of this to obtain data relevant for very different kinematical regimes: one uniform and more constrained and the other close to critical state. A direct comparison between the shape and kinematic databases shows to what degree particle shape descriptors are related to observed kinematics. It appears that true sphericity is a good predictor of upper bound rotational restraint.

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Acknowledgements

The work here described has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy through Grants BIA2014-59467-R and BIA2017-84752-R. Laboratoire 3SR is part of the LabEx Tec21 (Investissements d’Avenir - Grant Agreement nANR-11-LABX-0030).

Funding

Spanish Ministry of Economy (Grants BIA2014-59467-R and BIA2017-84752-R). Laboratoire 3SR is part of the LabEx Tec21 (Investissements d’Avenir - Grant Agreement nANR-11-LABX-0030).

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  1. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya (UPC), UPC – Barcelonatech, Moduli D2 Campus Nord UPC – Office 212, C Jordi Girona 1-3, 08034, Barcelona, Spain

    Riccardo Rorato, Marcos Arroyo Alvarez de Toledo & Antonio Gens

  2. Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Grenoble INP, 3SR, 38000, Grenoble, France

    Edward Carlo Giorgio Andò & Gioacchino Viggiani

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  1. Riccardo Rorato
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  2. Marcos Arroyo Alvarez de Toledo
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  5. Gioacchino Viggiani
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Rorato, R., Arroyo Alvarez de Toledo, M., Andò, E.C.G. et al. Linking shape and rotation of grains during triaxial compression of sand. Granular Matter 22, 88 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10035-020-01058-2

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