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Discrete modeling of sand–tire mixture considering grain-scale deformability

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Abstract

Mixing sand or soil with small pieces of tire is common practice in civil engineering applications. Although the properties of the soil are changed, it is environmentally friendly and sometimes economical. Nevertheless, the mechanical behavior of such mixtures is still not fully understood and more numerical investigations are required. This paper presents a novel approach for the modeling of sand–tire mixtures based on the discrete element method. The sand grains are represented by rigid agglomerates whereas the tire grains are represented by deformable agglomerates. The approach considers both grain shape and deformability. The micromechanical parameters of the contact law are calibrated based on experimental results from the literature. The effects of tire content and confining pressure on the stress–strain response are investigated in detail by performing numerical triaxial compression tests. The main results indicate that both strength and stiffness of the samples decrease with increasing tire content. A tire contact of 40% is identified as the boundary between rubber-like and sand-like behavior.

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Acknowledgements

The first author would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology of Iran for subsidizing his research visit at University of Newcastle. In addition, the first author would like to thank Sayed Ali Reza. The authors also thank the University of Newcastle for access to its high performance computing facilities. Finally, the authors would like to thank the reviewers and the editor for their valuable suggestions to improve the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil, Water and Environmental Engineering, Shahid Beheshti University (SBU), Tehran, Iran

    Mohsen Asadi & Ahmad Mahboubi

  2. Center for Geotechnical Science and Engineering, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia

    Klaus Thoeni

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  1. Mohsen Asadi
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  2. Ahmad Mahboubi
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Correspondence to Ahmad Mahboubi.

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Asadi, M., Mahboubi, A. & Thoeni, K. Discrete modeling of sand–tire mixture considering grain-scale deformability. Granular Matter 20, 18 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10035-018-0791-4

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