Study on strong contact system by sub-network partitioning method for binary mixtures

Abstract

AbstractThe contact network of binary mixtures can be divided into three contact sub-networks according to the branch vector length. A new method has been proposed for partitioning strong contact in binary mixtures. This method is based on the mean contact force of each sub-networks and is different from the conventional partitioning method, which is based on the mean contact force of the whole-network. A series of triaxial compression numerical tests were conducted on binary mixtures with different fine content (FC). The strong contact system in both the sub-network partitioning and the whole-network partitioning methods was studied. In some cases, certain coarse-coarse contacts that were identified as strong in the whole-network partitioning method were found to be weak in the sub-network partitioning method. Conversely, some coarse-fine and fine-fine contacts that were weak contacts in the whole-network partitioning method were identified as strong contacts in the sub-network partitioning method. In the sub-network partitioning method, the contribution of strong contacts to both axial and radial stress is lower than that observed in the whole-network partitioning method. Additionally, when considering branch vector length in the sub-network weighting parameters, there is a unique fabric-stress relationship was observed for different FC.Keywords: Binary mixturesdiscrete element methodstrong contact systemstrong contact partitioning methodfine content Data availability statementThe numerical data used in the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.Disclosure statementNo conflict of interest has been reported by the authors.Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.52278327) and Beijing Natural Science Foundation (No.8222020).