Abstract
The influence and contribution of fiber reinforcement to shear moduli and shear strength of granular materials such as soils have been widely investigated by geotechnical engineering.A modelling approach for evaluating the constitutive behavior of fiber reinforced granular material have been strongly required to understand the reinforcement effect of fiber depending on type, volume fraction, length and tensile moduli. This paper presents a new constitutive model of fiber reinforced granular material under triaxial conditions based on rule of mixtures. In this model, the stress distribution tensor, which is calculated by stiffness matrix of both fiber and granular material, is introduced to combine the characteristics of between fiber and granular material. The stiffness matrix of fiber is defined by assuming that fibers are working in their elastic domain. Fiber orientation distribution can be evaluated by probability theory. The stiffness of granular material is evaluated by the elastic-perfectly plastic Mohr-Coulomb model. The constitutive model for fiber reinforced granular material is calibrated against experimental data of the previous study. Simulations captured the reinforcement effect depending on fiber fraction, tensile moduli and fiber orientation qualitatively.
