Penetration test in coarse granular material using Contact Dynamics Method

Field tests are widely used for soil characterization in geotechnical applications in spite of implementation difficulties. The light penetrometer is a well-known testing tool for fine soils, but the physical interpretation of the output data in the case of coarse granular materials is far less evident. Indeed, the data are considerably more sensitive in this case to various parameters such as fabric structure, particle shapes or the applied impact energy. In order to achieve a better understanding of the penetration process into a coarse granular material, a numerical study was performed by means of contact dynamics simulations. The penetration of a moving tip in a sample composed of irregular grain shapes was studied and the influence of the driving velocity and input energy on the penetration strength was analyzed. The results show that the latter grows with both the penetration rate and energy, despite the strong fluctuations occur due to a jamming–unjamming process in which the contact network connectivity evolves intermittently in correlation with the penetration strength. This analysis suggests that the time-averaged data provided by a penetrometer is reliable information from which the bulk strength properties of coarse granular materials can be evaluated.