Plasticity for crushable granular materials via DEM

The mechanical behavior of crushable granular materials is characterized by strong non-linearity and irreversibility. In this paper, the incremental behavior of crushable granular soils is investigated by numerically simulating three dimensional stress probing experiments on Distinct Element models consisting of a random assembly of spheres. Particle breakage is permitted and the initial high stress condition ensures that crushing will occur along some of the loading directions. The results obtained show that particle crushing considered as an additional source of plastic mechanism induces a change in the direction of the plastic flow and that this direction change is independent of the incremental loading path. This result is independent of damping and the magnitude of plastic strains tends towards an asymptotic value as damping increases.

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