Numerical study of inter-particle bond failure by 3D discrete element method

The cohesive-frictional nature of cementitious geomaterials raises great interest in the discrete element method (DEM) simulation of their mechanical behavior, where a proper bond failure criterion is usually required. In this paper, the failure of bond material between two spheres was investigated numerically using DEM that can easily reproduce the failure process of brittle material. In the DEM simulations, a bonded-grain system (composed of two particles and bond material in between) was discretized as a cylindrical assembly of very fine particles connecting two large end spheres. Then, the bonded-grain system was subjected to compression/tension, shear, rolling and torsion loadings and their combinations until overall failure (peak state) was reached. Bonded-grain systems with various sizes were employed to investigate bond geometry effects. The numerical results show that the compression strength is highly affected by bond geometry, with the tensile strength being dependent to a lesser degree. The shear, rolling and torsion strengths are all normal force dependent; i.e., with an increase in the normal force, these strengths first increase at a declining rate and then start to decrease upon the normal force exceeding a critical value. The combined actions of shear force, rolling moment and torque lead to a spherical failure envelope in a normalized loading space. The fitted bond geometry factors and bond failure envelopes obtained numerically in this three-dimensional study are qualitatively consistent with those in previous two-dimensional experiments. The obtained bond failure criterion can be incorporated into a future bond contact model. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.