Influence of intermediate principal stress and rolling resistance on the shearing response of sand: a micromechanical investigation

Existing literature on true triaxial and torsional shear tests indicate that the mechanical response of a granular assembly is significantly influenced by the magnitude of the intermediate principal stress ratio. The present study aims to explore the mechanism behind such effects in reference to the particle-level interaction using 3D DEM simulations. In this regard, true triaxial numerical simulations have been carried out with constant minor principal stress and varying \(b\) values employing rolling resistance-type contact model to mimic particle shape. The numerical simulations have been validated against the true triaxial experiments reported in the literature for dense Santa Monica beach sand. The macro-level shearing response of the granular assembly has been examined in terms of the evolution of stress ratio and volumetric strain for different rolling resistance coefficients. Further, such macro-level response has been assessed in reference to the micro-scale attributes, e.g. average contact force, number of interparticle contacts, mechanical coordination number, contact normal orientation, and fabric tensor as well as meso-scale attribute like strong contact force network. Lade’s failure surface has been adopted to represent the stress and fabric at peak state in the octahedral plane, and mathematical expressions have been proposed relating the failure surface parameters to the rolling resistance coefficient.

Graphical abstract