Relationship between Grain Size and Shape of Natural and Crushed Sand

摘要

The relationship between particle size and shape for a given sand plays an important role in generating and reconstructing particle assemblies for micromechanical modeling. However, limited and conflicting knowledge is available in the literature describing the relationship between particle size and particle shape. The present study focuses on verifying any existing relationship between grain size and grain shape using different natural and processed sand samples collected from locations around the world. Though in previous literature strong relationships were documented, it is evident from the current research that there is no relationship between grain size and grain shape. As such, discrete element models of angular particle assemblies can be constructed by randomly selecting shapes belonging to a particular sand sample from its particle shape library, irrespective of size. The findings can also provide important information in understanding the nature of variation – or lack thereof – of shape parameters such as elongation, triangularity, squareness with grain size.