Stress level sensitivity of sand-rubber mixtures with particle size disparity effect

DY Liu and H Chen and YB Li and FB Liu, CONSTRUCTION AND BUILDING MATERIALS, 476, 141321 (2025).

DOI: 10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2025.141321

This study investigates the stress level dependent behavior of sand- rubber mixtures with varying particle size disparity, rubber content, and stress levels using the bonded particle model within Discrete Element Method. The analysis reveals that stress level affects conventional state variables, such as void ratio, coordination number, and their variants, with this effect intensifying as more rubber clumps participate in stress transmission. Consequently, stress levels significantly influence the ability of these state variables to capture the small-strain stiffness (G0) of sand-rubber mixtures. The results indicate that conventional state variables fail to describe the G0 characteristics of sand-rubber mixtures in a unified way, as they do not account for particle properties and size disparity between sand and rubber. Although rubber materials provide observable contributions in stress transmission, they are negligible when characterizing G0 values of mixtures regardless of the significant size disparity between sand and rubber. Refined state variables that exclude rubber materials effectively establish the correlation between G0 values and proposed state variables across varying stress levels and rubber content. This study demonstrates that the stress level sensitivity of sand-rubber mixtures is predominantly governed by the activeness of rubber clumps, which is intricately influenced by particle size disparity and rubber content.

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