Abstract: There are many ruins of ancient earthen sites in Northwest China, many of which are destroyed by violent processes of the wind erosion. Reinforcements are needed to protect these cultural heritages. The mechanism of reinforcement and resistance of environmental factors are the fundamental of the reinforcement theory. Particle flow code is used to simulate the soil before and after potassium silicate (PS) reinforcement, which is achieved by changing the parallel bond strength between particles. Compressive and tensile strengths of soil are calibrated with considering the soil particle size and density. The calibrated models are used to simulate the processes of the wind erosion. Sand-driving wind flow is represented by random generating particles with original vertical velocity. Results show that under the erosion of 20 m/s sand-driving wind flow, the magnitude of erosion increases as wind flow duration increases. The increasing magnitude of erosion of soil before reinforcement is much larger than that of reinforcement soil. The resistance erosion capability of reinforcement soil is greater than soil before reinforcement. These conclusions are generally agreed with the indoor wind-tunnel test results. The calibrated particle flow model of this research can be used for further analysis of ancient earthen site soil, such as wind erosion, water erosion, freeze thawing etc.

Key words: ancient earthen sites, wind erosion, sand-driving wind flow, particle flow code simulation