• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.99-107
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• 2004

Anisotropic characteristics of deformation are important to understand the particular behavior in the pre-failure state of soils. Recent experiments show that cross-anisotropic moduli of granular soils can be expressed by functions of normal stresses in the corresponding directions, which is closely linked to micromechanical characteristics of particles. Granular soils are composed of a number of particles so that the force-displacement relationship at each contact point governs the macroscopic stress-strain relationship. Therefore, the micromechanical approach in which the deformation of granular soils is regarded as a mutual interaction between particle contacts is one of the best ways to investigate the anisotropic elastic deformation of soils. In this study, a numerical program based on the theory of micromechanics is developed. Generalized contact model for the irregular contact surface of soil particles is adopted to represent the force-displacement relationship in each contact point far the realistic prediction of anisotropic moduli. To evaluate the model parameters, a set of analytical solutions of anisotropic elastic moduli is derived in the isotropic stress condition. A detailed procedure to determine the model parameters is proposed with emphasis on the practical applicability of micromechanical program to analyze the elastic behavior of the granular soils.