Fabric Evolution in Granular Materials Subject to Drained, Strain Controlled Cyclic Loading

While there have been many discrete element method (DEM) publications considering the micromechanics of granular materials subject to monotonic loading, studies of the particle‐scale material response to cyclic or repeated loading have been comparatively rare. From a geotechnical perspective soil is subjected to repeated loading in a variety of situations. Examples include foundations to railways and roads, foundations to wind turbines, soil adjacent to integral bridges, etc. The work described in this paper extends an earlier study by O’Sullivan et al.. [1]. In this earlier study, DEM simulations of strain controlled cyclic triaxial tests were coupled with laboratory experiments to validate a DEM model. The simulations were performed using the axi‐symmetric DEM formulation proposed by [2] and a stress controlled membrane algorithm was used to apply forces to balls along the outer vertical boundaries to model the latex membrane used in the laboratory tests. Specimens of uniform spheres and mixtures of sph...