EVALUATION OF SHEAR BEHAVIOR OF LARGE GRANULAR MATERIALS WITH DIFFERENT PARTICLE SIZES BY TRIAXIAL TEST AND NUMERICAL SIMULATION

Rockfill zones in CFRD consist typically of large granular materials, usually the maximum particle size up to several meters, which makes laboratory testing to determine the mechanical properties of rockfill difficult. Commonly, the design strength of the rockfills is obtained by scaling down the original rockfill materials and performing laboratory strength tests for the reduced size materials. The objective of the present study is to investigate the effect of particle size on the shear behavior and the strength for granular materials. A series of large-scale triaxial tests was conducted on large granular materials with the maximum particle size varying from 20 to 50mm. The test results showed that overall shear behaviors were similar between the samples with different particle sizes while there were slight differences in the magnitudes of the peak shear stress between the samples. In addition, a simulation of the granular material with the max. particle size of 20mm was performed using DEM code, $PFC^{2D}$, and compared with the test results. The deviatoric stress versus strain behaviors of experimental and numerical tests were found to be matched well up to the peak stress state.