A general rotation averaging method for granular materials

Abstract

In order to study the rotational behavior of granular materials, rotation averaging methods are required. Most of the existing rotation averaging methods are only for 2D cases and limited by the shape, position and size of the averaging volumes. Hence, a general rotation averaging method is proposed in this paper. Our approach is simple yet works for both 2D and 3D cases with very little restriction. The performance of this method is shown by both hypothetical examples and DEM simulations of plane strain tests with different boundary conditions.

Micro-mechanical analysis of caisson foundation in sand using DEM: Particle breakage effect

“…Figure 10 shows the particle rotation fields from tests without and with particle breakage. In both tests, the magnitudes of particle rotation for particles located at the interface between (Lin and Wu, 2017). Therefore, the averaged micropure rotation rates (APR) of all sand particles are presented in Figure 11.…”

Effects of interparticle friction on the response of 3D cyclically compressed granular material

“…or particle positions and displacements [5][6][7][8][9][10][11]; however, a key quantity that emerges specifically for frictional systems is particle rotations, which increase the number of degrees of freedom of the system to 6 from 3 in threedimensional systems. Only a few studies have an explicit focus on grain rotations [12][13][14][15][16][17] especially in the case of spherical particles in 3D, where a direct correlation between displacements and rotations is not evident as it is in the case of irregularly shaped particles or twodimensional systems where the number of constraints to satisfy is lower. However, this does not mean that rotations are not important.…”

“…Moreover, in dense granular assemblies, energy loss is dominated by frictional dissipation that generates rotational motion. Although fundamental for frictional systems, only a few studies have an explicit focus on grain rotations [11][12][13][14][15][16].…”