Weibull Distribution to Describe Grading Evolution of Materials with Crushable Grains

This work presents a study on the evolution of the Grain Size Distribution (GSD) of an artificial granular material with crushable grains and its relation with the observed mechanical behaviour. The main aim of the work is to find a relationship between the initial GSD, its evolution and the mechanical behaviour. The artificial material used is a Light Expanded Clay Aggregate (LECA) subject to one-dimensional compression at various stress levels with eight initial GSDs characterised by four coefficients of uniformity and two mean diameters. The evolution of the GSD is characterised by a double mechanism depending on the initial GSD and on the applied stress level. A link between the evolution of the GSD, breakage and the compressibility curves is observed. A bimodal Weibull distribution function is proposed to describe the GSD before and after testing. The long term objective of the work is to link the evolution of breakage, from moderate to high stress, with the mechanical behaviour and to formulate a constitutive model able to describe the observed behaviour.