A computational procedure for the prediction of settlement in granular materials under cyclic loading

Granular materials have been subject of considerable interest in the recent years because of the richness of their physical behavior. Coupled with experimental approaches, the discrete element methods are now recognized as powerful tools to understand several mechanisms related to these materials such as convection, compaction and settlement. However, these methods are very costly in terms of calculation time. In this paper, we introduce a computational method for the simulation of three-dimensional granular bed responses under long term cyclic loading. It sequentially uses a molecular dynamics scheme, a time averaging technique, and a relaxation method in order to predict the long term flow. The suggested approach is then applied to specific cases in order to verify its efficiency and accuracy.