ON THE YIELDING AND PLASTIC COMPRESSION OF SAND

By Glenn R. McDowell. 2002

266 citations recorded by the source corpus.

ABSTRACT This paper presents an analysis of the yielding and plastic hardening of uniformly-graded samples of a silica sand subjected to one-dimensional normal compression. Single grains of silica sand have been compressed diametrically between flat platens to measure indirectly tensile strength. Approximately 30 grains were tested for each of the following nominal particle sizes: 0.5 mm, 1 mm and 2 mm diameter. It was found that the data could be described by the Weibull statistics of brittle ceramics, and the Weibull modulus could be taken to be about 3.1. Uniform aggregates of the same sand were then compacted to maximum density and subjected to one-dimensional compression. The initial particle size distributions were 0.3-0.6 mm, 0.6-1.18 mm and 1.18-2 mm, and aggregates were subjected to stresses of up to 100 MPa. All particles were initially of similar shape, and hence the initial voids ratios of the aggregates at maximum density were approximately equal. The yield stress was defined to be the point of maximum curvature on a plot of voids ratio against the logarithm of effective stress, and found to increase with decreasing particle size, and to be approximately proportional to the tensile strength of the constituent grains. However, the plastic compressibility index was found to be approximately constant and independent of the initial grading, and a fractal distribution of particle sizes appeared to evolve under increasing stress. There is evidence to suggest that the aggregates evolve towards a fractal dimension of 2.5 under high stresses.

Subfields: Civil and Structural Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6a0d6177caab35ecb2fcf1e8026682cc03adbe27

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In Civil and Structural Engineering

1. J. Bono
2. Glenn R. McDowell
3. M. Arroyo
4. A. Gens
5. C. Dano
6. Y. Cheng
7. M. Bolton
8. Y. Nakata

Citations in the corpus

• An approach to enhance efficiency of DEM modelling of soils with crushable grains (2015, background): “High-stress crushing material no. 2: silica sand McDowell (2002) presents oedometric results for another strong silica sand that go further in terms of applied stress and also include GSD.”
• Micro- and macro-mechanical behaviour of DEM crushable materials (2008, result): “This agrees with the experimental considerations of McDowell et al. (2002). In the Original Cam-Clay (OCC) model (Schofield & Wroth, 1968) a simple frictional dissipation function was adopted as”
• The effect of size on the strength of coarse rock aggregates and large rockfill samples through experimental data (2014, background): “McDowell and Amon [28] tested the application of Weibull’s theory on weak limestone sand grains of similar geometry (i.e., rather spherical shape) by checking the ability of Eq.”
• On the micro mechanics of one-dimensional normal compression (2013, methodology): “The compression lines have similar yield points, but more significantly they appear to have the same slope, which agrees with experimental observations (e.g. Nakata et al., 2001a; McDowell, 2002) where, for a given sand, the plastic compressibility index is a constant independent of initial grading.”
• An investigation of single sand particle fracture using X-ray micro-tomography (2015, background): “For one-dimensional compression, particle breakage was found to be the principal source of plastic volumetric compression on the normal compression line (McDowell & Bolton, 1998), and a strong correlation was found between single-particle crushing strength and the macroscopic yield stress of sand (M”