This paper presents a comprehensive study on the evolution of the small-strain shear modulus (G) of granular materials during hydrostatic compression, conventional triaxial, reduced triaxial, and p-constant triaxial tests using 3D discrete element method. Results from the hydrostatic compression tests indicate that G can be precisely estimated using Hardin's equation and that a linear correlation exists between a stress-normalized G and a function of mechanical coordination number and void ratio. During the triaxial tests, the specimen fabric, which refers to the contact network within the particle assembly, remains almost unchanged within a threshold range of stress ratio (SR). The disparity between measured G and predicted G, as per empirical equations, is less than 10% within this range. However, once this threshold range is exceeded, G experiences a significant SR effect, primarily due to considerable adjustments in the specimen's fabric. The study concludes that fabric information becomes crucial for accurate G prediction when SR threshold is exceeded. A stiffness-stress-fabric relationship spanning a wide range of SR is put forward by incorporating the influences of redistribution of contact forces, effective connectivity of fabric, and fabric anisotropy into the empirical equation.

Gap-graded soil, characterized by the absence of certain particle sizes, is commonly used in infrastructure projects such as dams and roadbeds. A comprehensive understanding of both the macro- and micro-mechanical behaviors of discontinuously graded soils is essential for their effective use in engineering applications. In this study, drainage triaxial compression tests were conducted on four gap-graded soil samples with different fine-grain contents mainly using the DEM method, whereas the flexible boundary part was performed using the FDM-DEM method. The contacts were classified based on the magnitude of contact forces between coarse and fine particles, considering the coordination number of the particles involved and the normal angular distribution of these contacts. This classification enabled a detailed analysis of how fine particles contribute to stress transmission and structural evolution during shearing. The fabric tensor for these contact types provided further insights into the anisotropy of samples during shearing. On the microscopic scale, the evolution of contact numbers was found to closely align with the observed stress-strain behaviors. Increasing fine particle content significantly altered the role of fine particles in the stress transmission process. With low content of finer particles, initially, fine particles were situated within the voids formed by coarse particles, and the fine particles are gradually embedded into the coarse particles during the loading process. With the increase of fine particle content, fine particles constantly aggregate to block coarse particles and become the main medium of stress transmission.

Around the world severe damages were observed due to reliquefaction during repeated earthquakes, whereas precise understanding of its mesoscopic mechanism is not much discovered. Influence of these earthquakes on reliquefaction needs to be investigated to understand its significance in contributing to inherent sand resistance. In the present study, centrifuge model experiments were performed to examine the influence of foreshocks/aftershocks and mainshock sequence on resistance to reliquefaction. Two different shaking sequences comprising six shaking events were experimented with Toyoura sand specimen with 50 % relative density. Acceleration amplitude and shaking duration of a mainshock is twice that of foreshock/aftershock. In-house developed advanced digital image processing (DIP) technology was used to estimate mesoscopic characteristics from the images captured during the experiment. The responses were recorded in the form of acceleration, excess pore pressure (EPP), subsidence, induced sand densification, cyclic stress ratio, void ratio and average coordination number. Presence of foreshocks slightly increased the resistance against EPP before it gets completely liquefied during the mainshock. Similarly, aftershocks also regained the resistance of liquefied soil due to reorientation of particles and limited generation of EPP. However, application of mainshocks triggered liquefaction and reliquefaction and thus eliminated the beneficial effects achieved from the prior foreshocks. Reliquefaction was observed to be more damaging than the first liquefaction, meanwhile the induced sand densification from repeated shakings did not contribute to increased resistance to reliquefaction. The apparent void ratio estimated from the DIP technology was in good agreement with real void ratio values. Average coordination number indicated that the sand particles moved closer to each other which resulted in increased resistance during foreshocks/aftershocks. In contrast, complete liquefaction and reliquefaction have destroyed the dense soil particle interlocking and made specimen more vulnerable to higher EPP generation. (c) 2025 Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of The Japanese Geotechnical Society. This is an open access article under the CC BY- NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

The mechanical response of granular materials is influenced significantly by both the magnitude and strain rate. While traditionally considered rate-independent in the quasi-static regime, granular media can exhibit rate effects in certain instances. This research uses two-dimensional discrete element modelling (DEM) to investigate the rate effects in one-dimensional compression tests by comparing non-crushable with crushable granular samples. This study indicates that micromechanical properties such as particle breakage and contact force distributions are predominant factors in dictating the macroscopic responses of the material. The DEM simulations highlight differences in macroscopic changes between crushable and non-crushable samples, demonstrating a clear correlation between mechanical properties and underlying microstructural features. Notably, the distribution of contact forces varies with strain rates, influencing the degree of particle breakage and, consequently, the overall rate-dependent behaviour. Further, this study explores the impact of post-breakage contact creation and progressive force redistribution, which contributes to observable differences in macroscopic stress under varying loading rates, which is quantified using coordination number, particle velocity, and fabric tensor profiles at two loading rates.

Granular soils exhibit very complex responses when subjected to cyclic loading. Understanding the cyclic behavior of such materials is not only crucial for engineering applications but also the bottleneck of most of constitutive models. This study employs 3D Discrete Element Method (DEM) simulations to explore the accumulative plastic deformation and the internal fabric evolution within granular soils during cyclic loading. Two novel observations are identified: (1) A distinct and unique linear relationship between post-cyclic loading void ratio e and log ( p*/p 0 ) is found independent of the amplitude of cyclic load and the initial stress state prior to cyclic loading, where p* is the mean pressure incorporating cyclic loading stress and p 0 is the mean pressure prior to cyclic loading; (2) When resuming drained triaxial loadings after cyclic loadings, we observe that both microstructural and macroscopic variables converge to the same values they would have reached for pure monotonic drained triaxial loadings. This intriguing behavior underscores and extends to more general loading paths the influential and attractive power of the critical state.

This paper aims to systematically describe the mesostructural and mechanical changes in the surrounding soil of glass fiber-reinforced polymer-trapezoidal core sandwich piles (GFRP-TCSPs) under lateral loads. A lateral loading device for hydraulic gradient testing is introduced, and a corresponding numerical model is established using a continuum-discrete coupling method. The dynamic interaction between the GFRP-TCSP and the soil during incremental loading is analyzed, including the effect of the soil particle contact parameters on the pile-soil interaction (PSI), changes in the pile bending moment, and the displacement field of the surrounding soil. The development of soil force chains and changes in porosity and coordination number in different zones of the soil around the pile are investigated. The results indicate that the attraction and friction between particles are crucial for the PSI behavior of the soil. In addition, the bending moment of the pile increases with increasing lateral load but decreases when the pile inclination angle diverges significantly. Different regions of the soil around the pile exhibit different variations in average contact force, porosity, and coordination number as the GFRP-TCSP overturns. These variations provide a theoretical basis for detecting pile instability.

Particle gradation is an important feature of granular materials, which has a significant influence on the mechanical properties of soil. Several dynamic compaction (DC) tests for mono-sized dry sand samples and a well-graded dry sand sample were modeled using discrete element method. The effect of particle gradation on crater depth was analyzed as well as coordination number, porosity and contact stress from a microscopic view. It is indicated that the change rates of dynamic stress, coordination number and porosity of the well-graded sample were greater than the results from the mono-sized samples. For the mono-sized samples and the well-graded sample, the differences in dynamic contact stress, coordination number and porosity became larger as the distance of measurement point from ground surface increased. The results also demonstrate from a microscopic view that the well-graded soil and the mono-sized soil with smaller particle size were more prone to become dense under DC. This study at a grain level is helpful to understand the microscopic mechanism of DC and has a certain guiding significance to the construction of DC.