Abstract:

The initial fabric of sample grain is a hard artificial controlling factor in the laboratory triaxial tests of coarse-grained soil. Based on cellular automata method, combining the laboratory triaxial tests of coarse-grained soil developed the HHC-CA model which generated the coarse-grained soil samples of different initial fabrics of grain to characterize the heterogeneous and random distribution of coarse-grained soil grain group. Then by means of the fast lagrangian analysis of continua in three dimensions (FLAC3D), conducting triaxial numerical simulation tests of coarse-grained soil and discussing the relationship between the gravel contents of sample shear band and samples and internal friction angle. Numerical simulation results indicate that the relationship between internal friction angle of coarse-grained soil and gravel contents of samples shear band were increasing function in the same size grading. According to the increasing of samples gravel contents, the internal friction angle might reduce, but the mean internal friction angle significantly increases with the increment of samples gravel contents.

Key words: coarse-grained soil, initial fabric of grain, cellular automaton, shear band, gravel contents