Computers and Geotechnics 141 (2022) 104518

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Computers and Geotechnics

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compgeo

DEM analysis of small and small-to-medium strain shear modulus of sands

Nallala S.C. Reddy a, Huan He b, Kostas Senetakis a, *
a
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
b
Southeast University, Nanjing, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Despite the significant progresses in discrete-based numerical studies of granular materials, most efforts have
DEM been placed in the study of large deformation problems and there are many unresearched areas in the multi-scale
Shear modulus analysis and the influence of grain-scale parameters on the bulk behavior of granular systems in the regime of
Modulus reduction curves
small strains. In this work, we present a numerical investigation into the small and small-to-medium strain shear
Contact force network
modulus of sands performing DEM analyses, exploring the influence of grain-scale parameters, and attempting to
link micromechanical-based quantities with the macroscopic behavior of granular materials. For the calibration,
we used real experimental grain-scale data for the contact stiffness and interparticle friction, and resonant
column macroscopic test results on a quartz sand were used as the benchmark model sample. Subsequently, a
parametric DEM study was carried out investigating the influence of Young’s modulus (and contact stiffness) as
well as the interparticle friction on macroscopic stiffness and stiffness reduction curves, and additional insights
were obtained based on the inferred contact forces and force networks, coordination number and fabric
anisotropy. The numerical results contribute to understand the differences between different sand types as re­
ported in the literature in the regime of small-to-medium strains.

1. Introduction
The constitutive behavior of granular materials depends significantly
on the interactions between the individual grains at their contacts as
well as their elastic and morphological properties, thus their multi-scale
analysis and implementation of micromechanical-based concepts are
necessary steps to obtain insights into the complex governing mecha­
nisms which control their response (Yimsiri and Soga, 2000; Soga and
O’Sullivan, 2010; O’Sullivan, 2011a, 2011b). This has triggered a sig­
nificant amount of research both in geomechanics applications (O’Sul­
livan et al., 2013; Guo and Zhao, 2014; Kumar and Luding, 2016; Zhao
et al., 2016, 2018, 2020; Guillard et al., 2017; Kawamoto et al., 2018;
Mollon et al., 2020; Wiebicke et al., 2017, 2019, 2020), as well as ap­
plications related with manufacturing processes (Shaheen et al., 2021),
the study of avalanches (Saitoh et al., 2019) and rheological studies in
silo flows (Weinhart et al., 2016). One of the powerful micromechanical-
based numerical tools used in computer simulations of granular systems
is the discrete element method (DEM) (after Cundall and Strack, 1979),
which has contributed enormously to studies of a wide range of prob­
lems. These include the analysis of soil-structure interaction and other
geotechnical engineering systems (Jiang et al., 2016; Nadimi et al.,
2017), the analysis of energy dissipation in granular systems (Wang and
Yan, 2012; Hanley et al., 2018; Keishing et al., 2020), the structural
degradation in particulate materials (Huang et al., 2019a), jamming
transition (Huang et al., 2019b) as well as the replication of laboratory
element-size experiments including boundary influences or sample size
effects (Huang et al., 2014a; Rackl and Hanley, 2017; Zhu et al., 2020).
Yimsiri and Soga (2000) developed, based on Hertz model, a modi­
fied normal contact constitutive relationship incorporating the surface
morphological characteristics of grains at the very-small scale and based
on their new model incorporating quantitatively roughness they could
explain the stiffness – pressure relationship obtained from laboratory-
based tests on real soil specimens. Since then, significant progresses
have been reported in the development of micromechanical-based
models to understand soil behavior (Yin et al., 2014; Xu et al., 2018;
Zhao et al., 2018; Xiong et al., 2019), and the implementation of realistic
particle shape in DEM modeling (Zhou and Wang, 2017; Kawamoto
et al., 2018; Gong et al., 2019a; Yang et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2019,
2021; Capozza and Hanley, 2021; Lai and Huang, 2021; Peng et al.,
2021). This implementation can be particularly useful in the study of
large deformation problems, as particle shape may have a significant
influence on the critical state strength and volumetric behavior of

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: ksenetak@cityu.edu.hk (K. Senetakis).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compgeo.2021.104518
Received 26 May 2021; Received in revised form 29 July 2021; Accepted 11 October 2021
Available online 27 October 2021
0266-352X/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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