Computational study on the behaviors of granular materials under mechanical cycling

Considering that fusion pebble beds are probably subjected to the cyclic compression excitation in their future applications, we presented a computational study to report the effect of mechanical cycling on the behaviors of granular matter. The correctness of our numerical experiments was confirmed...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of applied physics 2015-11, Vol.118 (17)
Main Authors: Wang, Xiaoliang, Ye, Minyou, Chen, Hongli
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Applied physics
Beds
Chains
CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS
COMPRESSION
Computation
Cycles
Cyclic loads
DISTURBANCES
DYNAMIC LOADS
Effective medium theory
EXCITATION
Force distribution
GRANULAR MATERIALS
Parameters
PRESSURE DEPENDENCE
SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION
Stiffening
Stress concentration
STRESSES
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Summary:Considering that fusion pebble beds are probably subjected to the cyclic compression excitation in their future applications, we presented a computational study to report the effect of mechanical cycling on the behaviors of granular matter. The correctness of our numerical experiments was confirmed by a comparison with the effective medium theory. Under the cyclic loads, the fast granular compaction was observed to evolve in a stretched exponential law. Besides, the increasing stiffening in packing structure, especially the decreasing moduli pressure dependence due to granular consolidation, was also observed. For the force chains inside the pebble beds, both the internal force distribution and the spatial distribution of force chains would become increasingly uniform as the external force perturbation proceeded and therefore produced the stress relief on grains. In this case, the originally proposed 3-parameter Mueth function was found to fail to describe the internal force distribution. Thereby, its improved functional form with 4 parameters was proposed here and proved to better fit the data. These findings will provide more detailed information on the pebble beds for the relevant fusion design and analysis.
ISSN:0021-8979
1089-7550
DOI:10.1063/1.4934565