Li Shihai

A two-scale contact model for collisions between blocks in CDEM

Contact detection between interacting blocks is of great importance to discontinuity-based numerical methods, such as DDA, DEM, and NMM. A rigorous contact theory is a prerequisite to describing the interactions of multiple blocks. Currently, the penalty method, in which mathematical springs with high stiffness values are employed, is always used to calculate the contact forces. High stiffness values may cause numerical oscillations and limit the time step. Furthermore, their values are difficult to identify. The intention of this study is to present a two-scale contact model for the calculation of forces between colliding blocks. In this new model, a calculation step taken from the moment of contact will be divided into two time stages: the free motion time stage and the contact time stage. Actually, these two time stages correspond to two real physical processes. Based on this, we present a new numerical model that is intended to be more precise and useful in calculating the contact forces without mathematical springs. The propagation of the elastic wave during collision is of a characteristic length, which determines the volume of material involved in the contact force calculation. In conventional contact models, this range is always regarded as the length of one element, which may lead to an inaccurate calculation of contact forces. In fact, the real scale of this range is smaller than the length of a single element, and subdivided elements, which are refined according to the characteristic length and are presented in the new contact model.

bExperimental and discrete element numerical analysis of side slope instability induced by fissure water underlying impervious bed

When the sliding mass contains impervious bed, rainfall can infiltrate into mountain via crevices and form higher artesian aquifer at impervious bed inferior. This will decrease slip resistance and increase sliding forces of the sliding mass, thus lowering the safety factor, and inducing landslide disasters. In this paper, a landslide experimental apparatus is designed for experimental studies on the mechanism of this type of landslides. Meanwhile, the non-dimensional parameters in the model experiment are taken into account using dimensional analysis. The experimental results show that (1) the ratio of the cleft water pressure to the overlying pressure is a crucial parameter affecting the stability of the slope; (2) when the shut-in pressure reaches 80% of the normal component of the pressure on the slip surface made up of rock and soil, landslide will occur: (3) the whole slope will start to slide when the shut-in pressure is equal to the normal component of the pressure formed by the overlying rock and soil on the upper 30% area. In this article, a discrete element method simulation is used to investigate the influence of cleft water pressure and shearing strength on the landslide stability. It can be concluded that the critical value of Ccr, ρcr, which determines the slide mass stability, increases with the increase of the water pressure; if the water pressure reaches a high level, the stability of the slide mass depends mainly on C, while the influence of ϕ becomes smaller than C.