Independence of shear strength with particle size dispersity still valid in polyhedral particle assemblies

Abstract

A very staggering result that has been constantly highlighted in granular media is that the shear strength of granular assemblies is independent of the particle size dispersity. In other words, a packing composed of monodisperse particles has similar strength properties to those of polydisperse systems. This has been shown numerically for the simplified case of disc and polygon assemblies in 2D and spheres in 3D. In this paper, we use three-dimensional contact dynamics simulations to revisit these results for the more complex case of assemblies composed of highly polydisperse rigid polyhedra. Although non-spherical shapes induce more intricated spatial correlations than spherical shapes because of the multiple contact types (i.e., vertex-face, edge-edge, edge-face, face-face), our numerical data provide evidence that the shear strength independence as the particle size dispersity increases still holds up for assemblies of polyhedra. We explain this finding from compensation mechanisms at the micro-scale between geometrical and mechanical anisotropies developed within the assemblies.