The flow through a single fracture is numerically studied by means of the Fluent Software. The results show that the roughness of the fracture significantly affects the hydraulic conductivity in the fracture as compared with the cubic law model widely used to describe the flow between two smooth parallel plates. A new model is proposed in this paper, the non-symmetric sinusoidal fracture model, to simulate the flow in a real fracture. This model involves two sinusoidal-varying walls with different phases to replace the flat planes in the cubic law model. The relationships between the effective hydraulic apertures and the phase retardation for different relative amplitudes and wavelengths are numerically investigated. A simple expression of the effective hydraulic aperture of the fracture is obtained, together with the law of the effective hydraulic aperture against the amplitude, the phase retardation and the wavelength of two sinusoidal-varying walls.
A modified discrete element method(DEM)with rolling effect taken into consideration is developed to examine macroscopic behavior of granular materials in this study.Dimensional analysis is firstly performed to establish the relationship between macroscopic mechanical behavior,mesoscale contact parameters at particle level and external loading rate.It is found that only four dimensionless parameters may govern the macroscopic mechanical behavior in bulk.The numerical triaxial apparatus was used to study their influence on the mechanical behavior of granular materials.The parametric study indicates that Poisson’s ratio only varies with stiffness ratio,while Young’s modulus is proportional to contact modulus and grows with stiffness ratio,both of which agree with the micromechanical model.The peak friction angle is dependent on both inter-particle friction angle and rolling resistance.The dilatancy angle relies on inter-particle friction angle if rolling stiffness coefficient is sufficiently large.Finally,we have recommended a calibration procedure for cohesionless soil,which was at once applied to the simulation of Chende sand using a series of triaxial compression tests.The responses of DEM model are shown in quantitative agreement with experiments.In addition,stress-strain response of triaxial extension was also obtained by numerical triaxial extension tests.
Fluvial processes comprise water flow,sediment transport and bed evolution,which normally feature distinct time scales.The time scales of sediment transport and bed deformation relative to the flow essentially measure how fast sediment transport adapts to capacity region in line with local flow scenario and the bed deforms in comparison with the flow,which literally dictates if a capacity based and/or decoupled model is justified.This paper synthesizes the recently developed multiscale theory for sediment-laden flows over erodible bed,with bed load and suspended load transport,respectively.It is unravelled that bed load transport can adapt to capacity sufficiently rapidly even under highly unsteady flows and thus a capacity model is mostly applicable,whereas a non-capacity model is critical for suspended sediment because of the lower rate of adaptation to capacity.Physically coupled modelling is critical for fluvial processes characterized by rapid bed variation.Applications are outlined on very active bed load sediment transported by flash floods and landslide dam break floods.
A new state-based elasto-plastic constitutive relationship along with the discrete element model is established to estimate the degradation of granular materials due to internal erosion.Four essential effects of internal erosion such as the force network damage and relaxation are proposed and then incorporated into the constitutive relationship to formulate internal erosion impacts on the mechanical behavior of granular materials.Most manifestations in the degradation of granular materials,such as reduction of peak strength and dilatancy are predicted by the modified constitutive relationship in good agreement with the discrete element method(DEM)simulation.In particular,the sudden reduction of stress for conspicuous mass erosion in a high stress state is captured by force network damage and the relaxation mechanism.It is concluded that the new modified constitutive relationship is a potential theory to describe the degradation of granular materials due to internal erosion and would be very useful,for instance,in the prediction and assessment of piping disaster risk during the flood season.
