Faramarzi, A., Harireche, O. and Alani, A.M. (2014) Representation of capillary forces in polydisperse granular assemblies in the pendular regime. In: 8th European Conference on Numerical Methods in Geotechnical Engineering (NUMGE); 18-20 Jun 2014, Delft, The Netherlands.

Abstract

In this paper, the equations governing capillary forces between polydisperse spheres in the pendular regime are presented. These equations are adopted within the Laplace-Young framework using a Toroidal approximation of the liquid bridge geometry. Based on the numerical solution of the fundamental problem and a novel evolutionary computing technique (EPR), an analytical expression is developed for the prediction of capillary force. The analytical expression accounts for the effects of intrinsic parameters such as inter-particle separation distance, ratio of particle radii and liquid volume. Such a representation of capillary forces is shown to mimic the real behaviour with a good accuracy. The developed model can be implemented in discrete element computer simulations as it does not require any iterations to update contact forces at particle level.

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