Experiments And DEM Analysis Of Buffering Capacity Of Granular Materials Under Impact Loads

Structures under impact loads are very common because of China's hilly environment. Rockfall accidents may cause big troubles, especially when water power stations or railways were built among mountains. It is so important to build facilities to withdraw impact loads. Granular materials of civil engineering are cheap and with a good buffering performance. But there are not much researches on it so far. The amount of articles about application of granular materials' buffering fact are even less. So this paper is trying to discover the buffering performance and the affecting factors of particle buffer of civil engineering area, by the following two parts:(1) A descibtion about the experiment of buffering capacity of granular materials of civli enginnering, which consist of sand and rock wih different sizes and densities. The thickness and size of particles, as the critical buffering factors, are revealed by analyzing the data of the experiment.(2) An introduction to the numerical simulation method and sofeware, namely the discrete element method and PFC2 D. A decribtion of the simulation process to find out the affecting factors of particle buffer and the conclutions from it. By comparing the conclutions with the conclusion from the experiment before, three main affecting factors are found: thickness, hardness and size of particles. Particles with smaller size and of less hardneess are better buffering materials. Density is not an important buffering affector. These conclusions are helpful to give advice on the application of particles of civli engineering using as buffering materials.