Triaxial shear test of mechanical characteristics on rubber fiber-sand mixtures based on particle flow code simulation

Rubber fiber-sand mixture has long been recognized as a light energy absorbing material with a good application prospect in engineering. To illustrate the variation laws of strength characteristics, curves of stress-strain and micromechanism of rubber fiber-sand mixtures, this study cinducted a triaxial shear test for different proportions of rubber fiber-sand mixture. The study performed the numerical simulation of triaxial tests on rubber fiber-sand mixtures using particle flow theory based on PFC3D, then compared the results of numerical experiments and laboratory tests. The results show that:the stress-strain relation is transited from strain softening to strain hardening, and the volumetric strain changes to shrinking from expansion gradually with the increase of the rubber fiber contents. Under the same confining pressure, the higher the rubber fiber contents are, the smaller the deformation modulus is. This indicates that the incorporation of rubber helps to enhance the compression performance of the sample.