DEM investigation of the effect of intermediate principle stress on particle breakage of granular materials

This study investigates the influence of the intermediate principle stress on the particle breakage of granular materials. The crushable agglomerate method is applied to model soil particles and numerical true triaxial tests were carried out. The results show that particle breakage increases with increasing b value, the relationship of which follows an exponential function and agrees well with previous experimental results. More importantly, the study found that the relationship between particle breakage and total energy input is independent of the intermediate principle stress, which provides a good basis for the constitutive modeling of granular materials. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.