Influence of stress-path on pore size distribution in granular materials

Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Knapur, Kanpur - 208016, India

^* Corresponding author: arghya@iitk.ac.in

Published online: 30 June 2017

Abstract

Pore size distribution is an important feature of granular materials in the context of filtration and erosion in soil hydraulic structures. Present study focuses on the evolution characteristics of pore size distribution for numerically simulated granular assemblies while subjected to various compression boundary constrain, namely, conventional drained triaxial compression, one-dimensional or oedometric compression and isotropic compression. We consider the effects initial packing of the granular assembly, loose or dense state. A simplified algorithm based on Delaunay tessellation is used for the estimation of pore size distribution for the deforming granular assemblies at various stress states. The analyses show that, the evolution of pore size is predominantly governed by the current porosity of the granular assembly while the stress path or loading process has minimal influence. Further it has also been observed that pore volume distribution reaches towards a critical distribution at the critical porosity during shear enhanced loading process irrespective of the deformation mechanism either compaction or dilation.