Introduction to Doublet Mechanics

A comparison of micro-mechanical modeling of asphalt materials using finite elements and doublet mechanics

“…Applications of this theory to geomechanics problems have been given by Granik and Ferrari (1993) and Ferrari et al (1997). For these applications, a granular interpretation of doublet mechanics has been employed, in which the material is viewed as an assembly of circular or spherical particles.…”

“…However as pointed out in the literature, there exists considerable experimental evidence that a granular medium under similar surface loading will exhibit tensile openings. Ferrari et al (1997) refer to this issue as FlamantÕs paradox.…”

“…It would thus appear that a micro-mechanical model is needed to resolve this paradox, and Ferrari et al (1997) and Wang et al (2003) have applied doublet mechanics to investigate this issue. For the Flamant problem using the transformation given by (7) and (8), Ferrari et al (1997) have developed the micro-stresses for the first order, non-scale case for a medium with hexagonal packing as shown in Fig.…”

“…This approach originally developed by Granik (1978), has been applied to granular materials by Granik and Ferrari (1993) and Ferrari et al (1997). Recently Wang et al (2003) presented a micro-mechanical study of top-down cracking of asphalt materials using some results from this theory.…”

“…The theory has shown promise is predicting observed behaviors that are not predictable using continuum mechanics. These behaviors include the so-called Flamant paradox (Ferrari et al, 1997), where in a half-space under compressive boundary loading, continuum theory predicts a completely compressive stress field but observa-tions indicate regions of tensile stress. Other anomalous behaviors include dispersive wave propagation.…”