Abstract Background Geologic and geotechnical conditions of soils where Nanka Ajali Formations outcropped in Anambra Basin, Southeastern Nigeria were investigated accessed. This was done using detailed mapping mechanical soil laboratory tests to unravel the genesis continued expansion gully erosion study areas. Results Field revealed that erosions are more pronounced area with poor vegetation c...

We report experiments on piles of cohesionless granular materials showing the effect of construction history on static stress distributions. Stresses under piles are monitored by sensitive capacitive techniques. The piles are formed either by pouring granular material from a funnel with a small outlet (localized source), or from a large sieve (homogeneous rain). Localized sources yield stress p...

A homogenization strategy for granular materials is presented and applied to a three-dimensional Discrete Element Method (DEM), that uses superellipsoids as particles. Macroscopic quantities are derived from the microscopic quantities resulting from a DEM simulation by averaging over representative volume elements (RVEs). The implementation of a RVE is described in detail regarding the definiti...

Cohesive granular media flowing down an inclined plane are studied by discrete element simulations. Previous work on cohesionless granular media demonstrated that within the steady flow regime where gravitational energy is balanced by dissipation arising from intergrain forces, the velocity profile in the flow direction scales with depth in a manner consistent with the predictions of Bagnold. H...

A fundamental property of any material is its response to a localized stress applied at a boundary. For granular materials consisting of hard, cohesionless particles, not even the general form of the stress response is known. Directed force chain networks (DFCNs) provide a theoretical framework for addressing this issue, and analysis of simplified DFCN models reveal both rich mathematical struc...