Experimental and numerical assessment of a cubical sample produced by pluviation

Abstract

A pluviation device for the fabrication of cubical samples of granular materials has been recently developed. The granular material is pluviated under gravitational loading through a rectangular Perspex tube. The pluviator is also designed to allow the control of the height of fall. Using a high-speed camera, observations of sample construction of uniformly graded spherical coarse glass ballotini have been made from one side of the apparatus and macro-scale properties of the created granular assembly (such as void ratio and density) have been assessed. This work focuses on the development of a three-dimensional discrete numerical model, based on the contact dynamics method, which simulates the whole fabrication process and provides detailed investigation of the micro-scale properties (energetic layer) and material inherent fabric (formation of ordered structure and wall effects, distribution of the orientations of the normal particle contacts).