Spatial Connectivity of Force Chains in a Simple Shear 3D Simulation Exhibiting Shear Bands
Publication: Journal of Engineering Mechanics
Volume 143, Issue 1
Abstract
Force chains within a granular material are the major load carriers responsible for the strength of a material. The authors study the spatial distribution of force chains across length scales in a three-dimensional (3D) assembly of spherical particles subject to simple shear. Specifically, the authors network sets of force chains by basing connectivity on the distance between chain particles. The authors quantify the connectivity of networked force chains at different length scales using ideas employed in landscape ecology. The authors find a geometric transition in force chain connectivity and observe a change in the character of this transition with respect to force chains restricted to the shear band. The spatial distribution of force chains in the shear band exhibits two dominant length scales: force chains are separated by lateral support, on average, by one particle diameter in one direction and two particle diameters in a second direction. The existence of two dominant length scales in the lateral support around those force chains within shear bands suggests improvements to predictive constitutive models by explicitly incorporating such variation in, for example, in-plane and normal to shear directions.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported in part by the US Air Force (AFOSR 15IOA059), the United States Army Research Office (W911NF-11-1-0175), the Australian Research Council (DP120104759), and the Melbourne Energy Institute. The authors thank S. Tobin and S. Pucilowskii for generously sharing their Python code for force chain extraction.
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Published In
Journal of Engineering Mechanics
Volume 143 • Issue 1 • January 2017
Copyright
© 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 3, 2015
Accepted: Jan 20, 2016
Published online: Mar 15, 2016
Discussion open until: Aug 15, 2016
Published in print: Jan 1, 2017
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