Assembly mechanics: Fid-Bau Portal

Assembly mechanics

Seville, Jonathan / Tüzün, Uḡur / Clift, Roland

Abstract Study of the mechanical behaviour of an assembly of solid particles in contact with each other or with a wall surface is essential to a significant number of process engineering applications involving bulk solids. The effects of single particle properties on the bulk mechanical behaviour of granular materials is an area of significant interest to process and materials engineers which has, however, received little attention in traditional civil engineering and soil mechanics literature (see, for example, Jenike, 1964; Schofield and Wroth, 1967). Historically, this is a direct consequence of the overwhelming popularity of a continuum mechanics approach in mathematical modelling of the granular flow and stress fields (Spencer, 1964; Pariseau, 1969a,b). In civil and mechanical engineering applications, the internal and wall friction coefficients and cohesion are traditionally measured as ‘bulk’ properties in planar shear test equipment such as the apparatus described in Chapter 4. The past two decades have also seen the development of more sophisticated bi-axial and tri-axial bulk testers in which it is possible to exercise more accurate control of the stress distribution and the interstitial voidage during both consolidation and shear of the material samples. However, the data from such equipment are more difficult to generate and invariably require more complex theoretical analysis than the results of the simple planar shear cell tests. The major shortcoming of the bulk mechanical failure tests is that they cannot be used to explain the effects of the single particle frictional properties on bulk flow.