Effect of particle breakage on the behavior of simulated angular particle assemblies

Many attempts have been made to find various relationships for different parameters and some kinds of constitutive models for studying the behavior of particulate media. All these models are based on concepts of continuous media. Using a numerical method such as discrete element method, one can figure out what is happening through a discontinuous media where soil particles play the main role in introducing the shear strength and deformation characteristics. The behavior of the media with breakable particles is studied in this paper and compared with that of the assembly with non-breakable particles. In this paper, the hyperbolic elastic model is investigated for the assembly of polygon shaped particles in two different test series. In addition, evolution of different macro parameters of the assembly such as volume strain, angle of friction, angle of dilatancy and elastic modulus is studied during the simulation tests both for non-breakable and breakable soil particles. At the end, a parametric study is performed on the effect of strength of particle breakage on the assembly behavior.