'Stress-force-fabric' relationship for assemblies of ellipsoids

Stress-force-fabric relationship (S-F-F) stands for the explicitly formulated relationship between the components of the stress tensor for an assembly of particles in static equilibrium and anisotropy tensors representing either existing or load-induced biases in the spatial distributions of some relevant microscopic parameters. In this paper, the S-F-F relationship is formulated for ellipsoids and verified using results of three-dimensional numerical simulations with assemblies of prolate spheroids. The implications of the relationship regarding the effect of particle shape and contributions of different forms of anisotropy to the material shear strength of such assemblies are discussed. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.