44 / 2025-04-24 12:55:11

Distribution of pore flow flux in binary granular packings

Internal erosion,Suffusion,Pore flux rate

Binary granular packing is mainly characterized by mixture of finer and coarser particles which is often encountered in geotechnical engineering, e.g., gap-graded soils. The hydraulic and erosion properties of binary granular packings have gained special attention due to its close relation to the safety of earth structures, e.g., internal erosion of gap-graded soils in dam foundations. The pore flow distribution within the voids of the coarse skeleton is a key factor that affects the hydraulic properties and erosion process in binary granular packings, while a further understand on it is still needed. For this purpose, a semi-resolved CFD-DEM model was adopted to obtain the probability density distributions of pore flow flux within the voids of coarse skeleton in typical binary sphere packings. Delaunay triangulation was used to discretize the voids of coarse skeleton into individual pore element and, thereby, facilitate the calculation of pore flow flux through each pore throat. The results reveal that the distribution of pore flow flux changes obviously and becomes more uniform with the transition of the binary packing from underfilled to overfilled packings. However, the size ratio between coarser and finer particles has a negligible influence on the transition in the distribution