Contact laws for cemented grains: Implications for grain and cement failure (Q675572)

Analytical solutions are presented to predict the intergranular contact load transfer in cemented granular media where both grain material and cement are elastic. The grains can be separated, have a direct point contact, or be compacted prior to cement deposition. For all these cases contact stress distributions are obtained for normal, tangential and torsional deformation of two cemented deformable grains. An important result is that intergranular cement even if very soft, is load-bearing. Thus cementation reduces contact stress concentration (as compared with direct Hertzian interaction). Contact stresses are maximum near the center of the contact region when the cement is soft relative to the grains, and are maximum at the periphery of the contact region when the cement is stiff. These results allow us to predict the static and dynamic failure of the grains and intergranular bonds in a particulate material.