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This research aims to use the finite element method to examine critical distress modes in the pavement layers due to changes in the structural properties brought upon by fire damage.

A full dynamic analysis is performed to replicate heavy vehicle axle wheel loads travelling over a pavement section.

Results show a 72 per cent decrease in the number of load repetitions which a fire-damaged pavement can experience before fatigue cracking of the asphalt. Further, there is a 51 per cent decrease in loading cycles of the subgrade before rutting of the fire-damaged system.

Fatigue of asphalt and deformation of subgrade from repeated vehicular loading are the most common failure mechanisms, and major attributors to pavement maintenance and rehabilitation costs. Pavement analysis has always been concentrated on evaluating deterioration under regularly occurring operational conditions. However, the impact of one-off events, such as vehicle petroleum fires, has not been evaluated for the effects on deterioration.

Granular materials possess multiscale structures, i.e. micro-scales involving atoms and molecules in a solid particle, meso-scales involving individual particles and their correlated structure, and macroscopic assembly. Strong and abundant dissipations are exhibited due to mesoscopic unsteady motion of individual grains, and evolution of underlying structures (e.g. force chains, vortex, etc.), which defines the key differences between granular materials and ordinary objects. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the major studies have been conducted in recent two decades.

The main properties at individual scale are introduced, including the coordination number, pair-correlation function, force and mean stress distribution functions, and the dynamic correlation function. The relationship between meso- and macro-scales is analyzed, such as between contact force and stress, the elastic modulus, and bulk friction in granular flows. At macroscales, conventional engineering models (i.e. elasto-plastic and hypo-plastic ones) are introduced. In particular, the so-called granular hydrodynamics theory, derived from thermodynamics principles, is explained.

On the basis of recent study the authors conducted, the multiscales (both spatial and temporal) in granular materials are first explained, and a multiscale framework is presented for the mechanics of granular materials.

It would provide a paramount view on the multiscale studies of granular materials.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new yield function for granular materials based on microstructures.

A biaxial compression test on granular materials under different stress paths is numerically simulated by distinct element method. A microstructure parameter S that considers both the arrangement of granular particles and the inter-particle contact forces is proposed. The evolution of the microstructure parameter S under the simulated stress paths is analyzed, from which a yield function for granular materials is derived. The way of determining the two parameters involved in the yield function is proposed.

The new yield function is calibrated using the test data of one sand and two rockfill materials. The shape of the new yield surface is similar to that of the Cam-clay model.

The paper proposes a microstructure parameter S, which considers both the arrangement of granular particles and the inter-particle contact forces. From the evolution of S, a yield function for granular materials is derived. The proposed yield function has a simple structure and the parameters are easy to be determined, leading to a feasible realization of engineering application.

This paper aims to develop a unified framework for modelling triaxial deviator stress – axial strain and volumetric strain – axial strain behaviour of granular soils with the ability to predict the entire stress paths, incrementally, point by point, in deviator stress versus axial strain and volumetric strain versus axial strain spaces using an evolutionary-based technique based on a comprehensive set of data directly measured from triaxial tests without pre-processing. In total, 177 triaxial test results acquired from literature were used to develop and validate the models. Models aimed to not only be capable of capturing and generalising the complicated behaviour of soils but also explicitly remain consistent with expert knowledge available for such behaviour.

Evolutionary polynomial regression (EPR) was used to develop models to predict stress – axial strain and volumetric strain – axial strain behaviour of granular soils. EPR integrates numerical and symbolic regression to perform EPR. The strategy uses polynomial structures to take advantage of favourable mathematical properties. EPR is a two-stage technique for constructing symbolic models. It initially implements evolutionary search for exponents of polynomial expressions using a genetic algorithm (GA) engine to find the best form of function structure; second, it performs a least squares regression to find adjustable parameters, for each combination of inputs (terms in the polynomial structure).

EPR-based models were capable of generalising the training to predict the behaviour of granular soils under conditions that have not been previously seen by EPR in the training stage. It was shown that the proposed EPR models outperformed ANN and provided closer predictions to the experimental data cases. The entire stress paths for the shearing behaviour of granular soils using developed model predictions were created with very good accuracy despite error accumulation. Parametric study results revealed the consistency of developed model predictions, considering roles of various contributing parameters, with physical and engineering understandings of the shearing behaviour of granular soils.

In this paper, an evolutionary-based data-mining method was implemented to develop a novel unified framework to model the complicated stress-strain behaviour of saturated granular soils. The proposed methodology overcomes the drawbacks of artificial neural network-based models with black box nature by developing accurate, explicit, structured and user-friendly polynomial models and enabling the expert user to obtain a clear understanding of the system.

The purpose of this paper is to present an investigation of the effect of different gravity conditions on the penetration mechanism using the two-dimensional Distinct Element Method (DEM), which ranges from high gravity used in centrifuge model tests to low gravity incurred by serial parabolic flight, with the aim of efficiently analyzing cone penetration tests on the lunar surface.

Seven penetration tests were numerically simulated on loose granular ground under different gravity conditions, i.e. one-sixth, one-half, one, five, ten, 15 and 20 terrestrial gravities. The effect of gravity on the mechanisms is examined with aspect to the tip resistance, deformation pattern, displacement paths, stress fields, stress paths, strain and rotation paths, and velocity fields during the penetration process.

First, under both low and high gravities, the penetration leads to high gradients of the value and direction of stresses in addition to high gradients in the velocity field near the penetrometer. In addition, the soil near the penetrometer undergoes large rotations of the principal stresses. Second, high gravity leads to a larger rotation of principal stresses and more downward particle motions than low gravity. Third, the tip resistance increases with penetration depth and gravity. Both the maximum (steady) normalized cone tip resistance and the maximum normalized mean (deviatoric) stress can be uniquely expressed by a linear equation in terms of the reciprocal of gravity.

This study investigates the effect of different gravity conditions on penetration mechanisms by using DEM.

The purpose of this paper is to show that there are some underlying principles of granular media that can be derived from statistical mechanics and that could be useful when considered in the context of computer simulations.

The fundamentals of statistical mechanics are presented and they are revised in order to set up a suitable approach for jammed static granular media. After a conceptual discussion about the entropy of granular matter, some specific statistical mechanics approaches that have been used for granular media are reviewed. Finally, a numerical simulation, conducted using an open source molecular dynamics code, is included as an illustrative example.

It is shown qualitatively how statistical mechanics can be used to analytically compute the expected statistical distribution of some quantities in numerical simulations.

The computation of entropy from histograms and the establishment of the constraints of the ensembles in simulations are still open issues.

Considering the entropy could set up new computational techniques. Initial arrangements could be analyzed in terms of their probability of occurrence and of their “distance” to the most probable state.

The paper includes the distribution of the mean force‐moment tensor component of a fast cyclic quasi isotropic compression process of a simple granular media. Results show how the system tends to an equilibrium state.

Traditional continuum theory is usually applied in analysis of a gravity dam and its foundation; as we all know, both analytic and numerical solution of traditional theory imply that stress concentration around the dam heel and toe is very severe. However, stress condition of the dam and its foundation seems better for it can work normally for decades. Since concrete masses have macroscopic inhomogeneity, a new model has been built in order to simulate the mechanics behaviour of dam and its foundation rationally as the influence of inhomogeneity of the material has been taken into consideration. The purpose of this paper is to describe the application of the Cosserat granular model to analyze the stress condition of a mass concrete structure.

Granular model of Cosserat theory has been built and adopted to model the gravity, considering the influence of the couple‐stresses, due to the inhomogeneity of the material.

The Cosserat results have been compared with the traditional numerical solution, and the outcome indicates that the distributions of the stresses and displacements are rational, and the stress concentration around dam hell and toe is less severe and closer to the reality when Cosserat theory adopted.

The granular model based on Cosserat theory has been used in modelling a dam body for the first time; because the model can reflect the influence of the inhomogeneity, it is more suitable than traditional continuum model under this condition.

In this paper, a new homogenization technique for the determination of dynamic and kinematic quantities of representative elementary volumes (REVs) in granular assemblies is presented. Based on the definition of volume averages, expressions for macroscopic stress, couple stress, strain and curvature tensors are derived for an arbitrary REV. Discrete element model simulations of two different test set‐ups including cohesionless and cohesive granular assemblies are used as a validation of the proposed homogenization technique. A non‐symmetric macroscopic stress tensor, as well as couple stresses are obtained following the proposed procedure, even if a single particle is described as a standard continuum on the microscopic scale.

This paper aims to present a novel scheme for imposing periodic boundary conditions with downscaled macroscopic strain measures of gradient Cosserat continuum on the representative volume element (RVE) of discrete particle assembly in the frame of the second-order computational homogenization methods for granular materials.

The proposed scheme is based on the generalized Hill’s lemma of gradient Cosserat continuum and the incremental non-linear constitutive relation condensed to the peripheral particles of the RVE of discrete particle assembly. The generalized Hill’s lemma conducts to downscale the macroscopic strain or stress measures and to impose the periodic boundary conditions on the RVE boundary so that the Hill-Mandel energy equivalence condition is ensured. Because of the incremental non-linear constitutive relation condensed to the peripheral particles of the RVE, the periodic boundary displacement and traction constraints together with the downscaled macroscopic strains and strain gradients, micro-rotations and curvatures are imposed in the point-wise sense without the need of introducing the Lagrange multipliers for enforcing the periodic boundary displacement and traction constraints in a weak sense.

Numerical results demonstrate that the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed scheme in imposing the periodic boundary conditions on the RVE. The results of the RVE subjected to the periodic boundary conditions together with the displacement boundary conditions in the second-order computational homogenization for granular materials provide the desired estimations, which lie between the upper and the lower bounds provided by the displacement and the traction boundary conditions imposed on the RVE respectively.

Each grain in the particulate system under consideration is assumed to be rigid and circular.

The proposed scheme for imposing periodic boundary conditions on the RVE can be adopted solely for estimating the effective mechanical properties of granular materials and/or integrated into the frame of the second-order computational homogenization method with a nested finite element method-discrete element method solution procedure for granular materials. It will tend to provide, at least theoretically, more reasonable results for effective material properties and solutions of a macroscopic boundary value problem simulated by the computational homogenization method.

This paper presents a novel scheme for imposing periodic boundary conditions with downscaled macroscopic strain measures of gradient Cosserat continuum on the RVE of discrete particle assembly for granular materials without need of introducing Lagrange multipliers for enforcing periodic boundary conditions in a weak (integration) sense.

Cosserat continuum models are motivated by modeling size effects in materials with micro-structure. While elastic Cosserat continuum models can reproduce size effects in deformation stiffness, inelastic models are often used to capture localization and post failure behavior of materials. In application of inelastic Cosserat models, parameter determination is a difficult issue not fully addressed. The purpose of this paper is to discuss parameter-related characteristic lengths in Cosserat continuum modeling of granular materials.

Based on a Cosserat continuum extension of a hypoplastic model for granular media, interpretation of additional parameters are sought through analysis of simple one-dimensional shear. Governing equations are obtained, respectively, for small strain shear formation and for stead flow state in localized zone.

Two characteristic lengths are obtained analytically for granular materials: one governs the size effect near boundaries in shear deformation, the other scales the thickness of shear band in failure. While both characteristic lengths are proportional to the micro-structure length (the mean grain diameter), the former is related to the micro-stiffness parameter, and the latter depends on the micro-strength parameter. The results reveal a connection between size effects, the micro-structure length and the material properties. The work also provides a new perspective to inelastic Cosserat continuum models, as well as a possible way for determination micro-deformation and strength parameters.

The results reveal a connection between size effects, the micro-structure length and the material properties. The work provides a new perspective and an interpretation to the micro-deformation and strength parameters of inelastic Cosserat continuum models, as well as a possible way for determination of these parameters.