Abstract: Both experimental and numerical results demonstrate that particle breakage has significant influence on the macro mechanical response of granular soils. In this study, a novel computational method was proposed to simulate particle breakage phenomenon in granular soils. The proposed method based on the discrete element method (DEM) and the scaled boundary finite element method (SBFEM) has advantages of each method. Individual grains of soil are modelled by a single star-convex polygon with an arbitrary number of sides. The DEM is used to determine the motion of particles and the interaction among particles, whereas the SBFEM is applied to obtain stress states of grains at the end of each time step. Since the SBFEM flexibly describes the morphology of each grain with a single polygon consisting of an arbitrary number of sides, it greatly reduces the necessary computational resources for stress analysis. When the stress state has been confirmed, Hoek-Brown criterion is chosen to determine the ‘plastic points’ within each particle. Once the ratio of ‘plastic points’ reaches a predefined threshold, the particle breakage is triggered. As a straight breakage line is assumed for simplification, the particle is split into two when breakage occurs. The newly generated polygons are directly modelled by the DEM and SBFEM without any change of the formulation, and thus this method does not need to predefine sub-particles and re-meshing elements. At last, the feasibility of the newly developed method is verified by a biaxial benchmark test.

Key words: rock-fill materials, discrete element method, scaled boundary finite element method, particle breakage, Hoek-Brown criterion, biaxial test