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2.7. Conclusion
It took little time for Biarez to understand that the complex behavior of granular
materials derived from their discrete nature. Despite the very limited means at his
disposal when he wrote his doctorate thesis, he did not hesitate to try to make the
link between local phenomena and the behavior of the REV. He was therefore the
first person to define geometric anisotropy from contact directions. He also analyzed
the orientation of contact forces and the balance of local arrays, and drew certain
information about plastic mechanisms in granular materials. He was also interested
in the breakage of particles in a granular medium and showed that this phenomenon
gave rise to a significant increase in the compressibility of these materials. To
perform this analysis, very innovative for his day, Biarez used experimental
approaches that were difficult to implement and performed analytical computations
on very simplified structures that nevertheless accounted for the essential physics of
the phenomenon.
In recent decades, the change of scale in granular media has become an area of
research attracting much interest and activity. In part, this may be due to the
emergence of a very powerful numerical tool: the DEM, which has enabled us to
gain easy access to both local and global variables. This new tool has allowed
researchers to explore the different paths chartered by Biarez more thoroughly and,
more often than not, their results have demonstrated the relevance of his ideas.
2.8. Bibliography
[BIA 62] B IAREZ J., Contribution à l'étude des propriétés mécaniques des sols et des
matériaux pulvérulents, Doctorate thesis, Faculté des Sciences, University of Grenoble,
France, 1962.
[BIA 63] B IAREZ J., W IENDIECK K., “La comparaison qualitative entre l'anisotropie
mécanique et l'anisotropie des milieux pulvérulents”, Compte Rendu de l'Académie des
Sciences , 256, pp. 1217-1220, 1963.
[BIA 97] B IAREZ J., H ICHER P-Y., “Influence de la granulométrie et de son évolution par
ruptures de grains sur le comportement mécanique des matériaux granulaires”, Revue
Française de Génie Civil , vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 607-631, December 1997.
[CAM 72] C AMBOU B., Compressibilité d'un milieu pulvérulent. Influence de la forme et de
la dimension des particules sur les propriétés mécaniques d'un milieu pulvérulent,
Doctorate thesis, Université scientifique et médicale de Grenoble, France, 1972.
[CAM 00] C AMBOU B., C HAZE M., D EDECKER F., “Change of scale in granular materials”,
European Journal of Mechanics, A/Solids , vol. 19, pp. 999-1014, 2000.
[CUN 79] C UNDALL P.A., S TRACK O.D.L., “A discrete numerical model for granular
assemblies”, Géotechnique , vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 47-65, 1979.
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