Numerical Modeling for Mechanical Behavior of Granular Materials Subjected to Freeze-Thaw Action with DEM

This paper proposes a new analytical procedure to simulate the frost heave of granular materials. The objective of the research is to examine the applicability of discontinuous analysis to numerical simulation for the mechanical behaviour of granular materials subjected to freeze-thaw action. In this paper, numerical simulations of freeze-thawing triaxial compression tests for glass beads were performed with three-dimensional DEM coupled with a thermal analysis, and the applicability of the DEM to the freezing-thawing behaviour of granular materials was discussed. As the results, it was shown that the proposed DEM model that puts many small elements between soil particles, which expand with dropping the temperature, can simulate the freezingthawing behaviour of granular materials to some extent though there is room for further investigation as to numerical modelling and setting analytical parameters.