Gyratory Shearing Compaction of Granular Materials

TL;DR

This paper investigates the effects of gyratory shearing on granular material compaction, revealing that pressure and inertial time scale are dominant factors, while gyratory speed and fluid viscosity have minimal impact.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the dominant factors influencing gyratory shearing compaction, especially highlighting the roles of pressure and inertial time scale.

Findings

Gyratory speed and fluid viscosity have little effect on compaction.

Pressure significantly influences compaction behavior.

Inertial time scale primarily governs the compaction process.

Abstract

In this letter, instead of investigating the compaction of granular materials under tapping or cyclic shearing, we focused more on the gyratory shearing compaction, where particles are subjected to constant pressure and shear rate continuously. Such a phenomenon is crucial to the compaction of asphalt mixtures or soil in civil engineering and can be extended to other areas, such as powder processing and pharmaceutical engineering. In this study, we found that the gyratory speed or interstitial fluid viscosity has almost no impact on the compaction behavior, while the pressure plays a more important role. Additionally, it is the inertial time scale which dictates the compaction behavior under gyratory shearing in most cases, whereas the viscous time scale can also have influence in some conditions.