4.3.2 Approaches to include steel fibres into the CPM
Concept of the ‘perturbed zone’
De Larrard [1999] proposed a method to include stiff steel fibres into the CPM-model. The perturbed volume of each grain fraction around the fibres was calculated by an inverse analysis from experiments of Bartos & Hoy [1996]. Subtracting half of the diameter of the grain fraction i under consideration of the fibre length, the length of a cylindrical or a rectangular volume vP of a single fibre is obtained (Fig. 4.1). To calculate the volume vP, this length is multiplied with the sum of the diameter of the fibre and the diameter of the grain times a fitting factor kF. The best estimation of kF was 0.065. The mean packing density can be calculated with Equation 4.8:
α=(1−φf −Nsf ⋅vp)⋅α
(4.8)
where:
α = mean packing density (affected by the container size) [-] φf = percentage of fibres of the granular skeleton [-]
Nsf = number of steel fibres [-]
vp = perturbed volume in a container [Vol.-%] α = unperturbed packing density [-]
Vp
dF+kF.d
bF+kF.d
lF-d/2 (b)
bF
aF
aF+kF.d
lF-d/2 (a)
Fig. 4.1 Principle of the perturbed zone: wall-effect of grains around fibres [after: De Larrard, 1999]
Good predictions were obtained for stiff steel fibres up to an aspect ratio of 60; the accuracy was worse with flexible fibres (e.g. polypropylene fibres) or for stiff fibres at higher aspect ratios [De Larrard, 1999].
Concept of the ‘equivalent packing diameter’
According to Yu & Zou [1998], the initial packing density of irregular particles depends on the shape and the size of the grains and the applied compaction energy. Yu et al. [1993] proposed the concept of the ‘equivalent packing diameter’ to include non- spherical particles into numerical simulations. Their approach was to relate the shape and the dimension of a non-spherical particle to the diameter of a fictitious sphere having an equivalent diameter that does not result in a change of the packing density