Microscopic analyses of stress profile within confined granular assemblies

Abstract

Bottom pressure of confined granular assemblies saturates at a certain value even this packing bed is being continuously charged. Corresponding formulation has been established to describe this interesting phenomenon. In this work, the influences of particle size and friction on the bottom stresses of granular matter were numerically investigated by discrete element method (DEM). It is found that the Janssen model can well predict the stress profile only when the size ratio of the container versus the particle is larger than 16. Moreover, a hydrostatic linear relation between apparent mass and filling mass can be obtained when the friction coefficient becomes insignificant (μ ≤ 0.01). To further interpret the Janssen effects, the granular assemblies are characterized and evaluated from the overall interactions with sidewalls, angular distribution function, void size distribution, coordination number, contact networks, contact orientation and distributions of contact forces within the packing structure. It is believed that these results will be helpful to comprehend the granular behaviors and may offer instructive reference to industrial processes in related fields.