Monte Carlo simulations of deformation behaviour of unbound granular materials based on a real aggregate library

ABSTRACT

The Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) has been developed to estimate the strength distributions of heterogeneous materials influenced by different factors. The method presents a statistical correlation between the macroscopic properties and the non-uniform characteristics at meso scale. This study proposes an extensive MCS to investigate the influence of the aggregate morphology on deformation behaviour of unbound granular materials (UGMs) based on a real aggregate library and the discrete element method. Two indexes, elongation index (EI) and flatness index (FI), were used to evaluate the morphological characteristics of 3D aggregates rebuilt by the X-ray CT technique. Furthermore, repeated load triaxial tests of UGMs were simulated by 50 MCS samples. The effects of shapes and sizes of aggregates on deformation behaviours were statistically analysed. The results show that the deformation behaviour is dependent on the size and the EI distribution, but insensitive to the loading frequencies and FI distribution.

KEYWORDS:

• Unbound granular materials
• Monte Carlo simulation
• repeated load triaxial test
• real aggregate
• discrete element method

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, grant number 52208426; Special Financial Aid to the Post-Doctorate Research Project of Chongqing; Open Fund of Key Laboratory of Special Environment Road Engineering of Hunan Province (Changsha University of Science and Technology), grant number kfj210501; the Science and Technology Project of the Department of Transportation of Jiangxi Province, grant number 2022H0024.