DISTRIBUTION AND EVOLUTION OF FREE VOLUME OF ELLIPSOIDAL PARTICLE SYSTEMS DURING SHEARING

Granular material is a complex multi-body interaction system which is composed of a large number of discrete particles and their surrounding free volume. Although the correlation between free volume and the mechanical properties as well as the deformation characteristics of granular materials has been proved, the local free volume of non-spherical particles is not fully understood at present due to the difficulties in characterizing. In this paper, the combined finite and discrete element method (FDEM) is used to simulate the triaxial tests of ellipsoidal particles with different principal axis lengths, and the Set Voronoi tessellation method is applied to construct the Voronoi cells of the particles during shearing. The statistical distribution and evolution of the local free volume of the granular systems during shearing are analyzed, and the influence of particle shape on the evolution of free volume is studied. Our results show the anisotropy of Voronoi cells gradually increases during shearing, and the degree of anisotropy increase will be intensified with the increase of particle shape asphericity, which means the granular assembly with a larger asphericity will experience more intense rearrangement during shearing. The local void ratio of ellipsoidal particle systems with different asphericity statistically complies with a k−Γ distribution, which is controlled by the global void ratio of granular assembly and not affected by particle shape and shear state. The local void ratio fluctuations follow an asymmetric laplace distribution (ALD), and its asymmetric parameter which has a linear relationship with the global void ratio of granular assembly describes the competition between contraction and dilatation of local free volume.