Estimates of Elastic Modulus for Media of Randomly Packed Granules

Abstract

The model of static hypothesis is not readily available for granular material treated as a collection of particles. Unlike other types of material, the internal stresses in a granular system are concentrated at discrete inter-particle contacts. In this paper, we propose a static hypothesis and a micromechanical description of strain considering the packing structure. The upper and lower estimates of the elastic moduli for granular materials are derived in explicit terms of the inter-particle properties.