A significant amount of research has been performed over the last two decades to characterize the microstructure of sand specimens and advance the understanding of the link between micro-structural properties and engineering behavior of these soils. Much of the research has been limited to two-dimensional (2-D) analysis that results in loss of information regarding the skeleton of the particle-pore structure and other attributes of the actual three-dimensional (3-D) microstructure. More recently, a number of techniques for studying these issues in 3-D have emerged. This paper uses a high-resolution optical microscopy based method for reconstruction of actual 3-D specimen microstructures. A montage and serial sectioning technique was implemented for creating 3-D microstructure volumes from 2-D optical images. The reconstructed 3-D digital structures were characterized for microstructural features. Specific attention was focused on shear band thickness. Simulated DEM sand structures were also constructed and characterized.
展开▼
