ENGINEERING COMPUTATIONS, VOL.

9, 267-276 (1992)

A MICROSTRUCTURAL FINITE ELEMENT MODEL FOR GRANULAR SOLIDS

CHING L. LIAO AND CHING S. CHANG
Department of Civil Engineering, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003, USA

ABSTRACT A microstructural finite element model (MFEM) for granular material considering the microstructure of material is presentented. In the MFEM method, a volume of large number of particles is represented by an element consisting of a few nodal points. The stiffness matrix of the element is then formulated based on the contact stiffness and the packing arrangement of the particles. The method can be easily applied in the framework of finite element technique to solve boundary value problems in practical situations. Applicability of the model is evaluated by comparing the results of MFEM model with that from DEM model. K YWORLDGranular solids Microstructural FEM E INTRODUCTION The discrete element method has been successfully applied to describe the behaviour of granular material under various types of loading conditions. The discrete element method uses the Newton's law as fundamental premise to calculate movement of individual particle considering its interaction with surrounding particles 1 . A quasi-static version of the same method has been used by other investigators 2 ' 3 . However, in practical problems, the number of particles involved is enormously large. Therefore, the discrete element method requires an excess amount of computer time to obtain a solution. It is thus desirable to use a continuum representation for the discrete system, which leads to a reduction of the system to a manageable size. Along this line of thinking, mathematical models for granular media have been studied with the consideration of the microstructure of the material 4,5 . In this paper, an attempt to use a finite element model for granular media considering the microstructure of the material is presented. The objective is twofold: (1) to reduce the number of degree of freedom by using a continuum representation of the discrete system so that the problem can be reduced to a manageable size, and (2) to present a method that can be easily applied in the framework of the finite element technique. The domain of an element, made of a collection of particles, is defined by a set of suitable number of nodal points. The total number of degree of freedom of the discrete system (i.e., translation and rotation of all particles within the element) is thus reduced to the displacement and rotation of nodal points. This is achieved by using a continuum shape function to represent the field of discrete kinematic variables. The element stiffness matrix, defining the relationship between nodal forces, nodal moments, nodal displacements and nodal rotations for each element, is derived based on the virtual work 0264-4401/92/020267-10$2.00 1992 Pineridge Press Ltd

Received February 1991

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principle. The external work done by the nodal forces and nodal moments is equal to the internal work done by forces and moments at all contacts between particles within the element. As a result, the element stiffness matrix can be directly expressed by the contact stiffness and the packing structure of the material. Since in the formulation, both modes of particle translation and particle rotation are considered independently, the granular medium is equivalent to a Cosserat-Mindlin or micropolar continuum. The element stiffness matrix can then be assembled into a global stiffness matrix using the conventional finite element technique for the analysis of boundary value problems. Examples of a granular structure subjected to load is illustrated and the results are compared with that of discrete element method to show the applicability of this method. FORMULATION FOR THE MICROSTRUCTURAL FINITE ELEMENT METHOD Weighting function In the finite element method, the domain of an element consisting of many particles can be represented by nodal points. These nodal points may be located on the boundary or within the domain. Let {Up} be the displacement vector of the nodal point 'p'. The displacement of any particle can be expressed by a weighting function Wp (x,y,z) and the displacements of these nodal points

= W1{U1} + W2{U2} + + WN{UN} (1) where {ua} is the displacement vector at the centre of particle 'a' located at (xa,ya, za) in the granular assembly. The displacement vector {ua} is a linear combination of the displacements at the nodal points. The coefficient Wp(xa,ya, za) is regarded as the weighting of nodal point 'p' to particle 'a'. For convenience, we collect all displacements for N nodal points of the element into one vector {U}, such that: {U} = <{U1}T,{U2}T,...,{UN}T>T (2) Thus Note that the dimension for {ua} is 3 x 1 and for {U} is 3N x 1. The [ a ] with a dimension of 3 x 3N is given by:

Similarly, the rotation of a particle, {a},is treated as an independent continuum field patched with the same weighting function by the rotations of nodal points given by: {a} = [a]{} (5) where {} is a vector containing all rotations for N nodal points of the element, such that:

{}=
where { } is the rotations of nodal point 'p'.
p

<{1}T{2}T...,{N}T>T

(6)

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Two particle interaction In a granular assembly, the displacement at the contact point 'c' on the surface of particle 'a' is given by: {uac} = {ua} + [ac]{a} = [ ] { U } + [ ac ][ a ]{} (7) where [ac] is given by:

where and are the components of position vector from the centroid of the particle 'a' to the contact point 'c' The relative displacement at contact point 'c' between particle 'a' and particle 'b', due to translation and rotation of the particles, is thus expressed as follows: {c} = {u a c }{u b c } = [Bc]{U} + [Cc]{} where [B c ] = [ a ] - [ b ] [C ] = [ ][ ]-[ ][ ] Similarly, the relative angular rotation at contact 'c' between two particles is given by:
c ac a bc b

(9) (10) (11)

{c} = { a }-{ b } = [Bc]{}

(12)

The contact displacement {c} and contact rotation {c} in (9) and (12) are related to the contact force {fc} and contact moment (mc} by the contact constitutive law. The contact forces {fc} between particle 'a" and particle 'b' (i.e., at point 'c'), is in general related to the relative displacement at the contact point 'c' as: {fc} = [kc]{c} (13) where [k c ] is the local stiffness matrix which can be expressed by tensor notation as follows: where are the contact stiffness in the directions of local coordinate system nc, sc, tc respectively. It is noted that couple effects between shear and normal directions are neglected. The contact moment {mc} at contact point 'c' is related to the relative angular rotation: {mc'} = [gc]{c} (15) where [gc] is the rotation stiffness matrix. The rotational stiffness matrix is expressed by tensor notation as follows: where gct are the rotational stiffness in the directions of the local coordinates nc, sc, and te respectively.

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Element stiffness matrix The principle of virtual work is used here to obtain the relationship between the forces and displacements at nodal points. Due to a virtual movement of a particle, {ua} and {wa}, the internal virtual work for the element is the summation of the work done for each contact in the domain of the element.

From the relationship between , and U, ((9) and (12)) and the relationship between f, m and , ((13) and (15)), the following are obtained: where

Corresponding to the nodal displacement and nodal rotation, we define the nodal force and nodal moment at node 'p' to be {Fp} and {Mp}. For convenience, we collect all forces for N nodal points of an element into one vector {2F} such that:

{F} = <{F1}T{F2}T...,{FN}T>T
Similarly, {M} = <{M1}T,...,{MW}T>T Thus, the external virtual work dWE for this element due to nodal virtual displacements, {U} and {(}, are given by: WE = {U}T{F} + { } T { M } (20)

According to the principal of virtual work, the external virtual work should be equal to the internal virtual work, i.e., W1, = {F} = [Kuu]{U} + [Kurr]{} {M} = [K ]{U}+ [
ru Krr

WE

(21) (22) (23) (24) (25)

Therefore, the nodal forces-nodal displacements relationship of an element can be obtained as: ]{}

In general, the moment at nodal points are equal to zero, therefore {} = -[K r r ]- 1 [K r u ]{U} Thus the equivalent force-displacement relationship can be given by: {F} = [K]{U}

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where Once the element stiffness is established the finite element method is carried out in the usual manner. EXAMPLES In the following examples, for the purpose of demonstration, only elastic behaviour is considered for the contact. Contact sliding can be included by using an elasto-plastic type of contact model and updating the packing configuration. Contact properties are taken to be: kn = 1000 lb/in2, ks = 400 lb/in2, and gt = 100 lb/in2. Packing shown in Figure 1 is considered for the analysis. The particle radius is 0.25 in. The size of the packing is 7 in. by 8 in., which is represented by one element with 9 nodal points. This element is subjected to compressive and shear deformations. The compression strain is 1 % and shear strain is 1%, as schematically shown in Figure 2, which also gives the boundary conditions during the deformation. The nodal forces for the compression deformation of the packing computed from the microstructuralfiniteelement method is given in Figure 3a. The forces are converted to boundary pressures on the element and shown in Figure 3b in the units of lb/in2. In Figure 3b, the numbers in parentheses are those obtained from the discrete element method. The computed nodal forces for the shear deformation of the packing are given in Figure 4a. The forces are converted to boundary pressures on the element and shown in Figure 4b in the units of lb/in2. Boundary pressures obtained from the discrete element method are given in parentheses. It is noted that the discrepancies are within 4%.

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The displacements, rotations and contact forces of particles are plotted for comparison between MFEM and DEM methods. Figure 5 is plotted for the case of compression and Figure 6 for the case of shear. The comparison shows close agreement. Figure 7 shows an example of footing load on ground surface. The granular material is represented by two elements in MFEM. The applied the pressure is 100 lb/in2. The calculated displacement at centre of footing is 0.0162 in. for DEM and 0.0169 in. for MFEM.

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Figure 8 shows the displacements, rotations, and contact forces for all particles for both MFEM and DEM methods. Close agreements are observed. CONCLUSION A microstructural finite element model (MFEM) for granular material considering the microstructure of material is presented. The results of MFEM show close agreement with that from DEM method. The MFEM method has the following advantages; (1) the method reduces the number of degree of freedom for all particles of the discrete system to a small number of degree of freedom for nodal points. Therefore, the problem can be greatly reduced to a manageable size, and (2) the method can be easily applied in the framework of finite element technique to solve boundary value problems in practical situations.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This paper is based on research supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. MSM-8814223 to the University of Massachusetts.
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