CEE Seminar: Continuum Modeling of Compaction and Creep in Wet Granular Solids

This talk focuses on the simulation of compaction processes in partially saturated granular media characterized involving particle fracture. For this purpose, concepts of continuum thermodynamics and fracture mechanics are used to account for different microscopic sources of energy dissipation, as well as for attributes such as grain size, shape and sorting. It is shown that the use of grainsize-dependent scaling laws enables the model to capture the macroscopic implications of capillary pressure and fluid adsorption at the surface of the particles. Most notably, it is shown that the hypothesized connection between hardening and solid surface area enables the model to capture spontaneously a variety of constitutive couplings, such as the feedback between relative humidity and creep rate, the dependence of the comminution pressure on the degree of saturation and the pressure-dependence of the capillary pressure curve.