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Investigation into the Soil-Root Composites

Using Distinct Element Method

Chapter December 2017

DOI: 10.1007/978-981-10-1926-5_112

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 The 7thInternationalConferenceonDiscrete Element Methods
August1 toAugust4, 2016 Dalian,China
Paper Number: G010111

Investigation into the soil-

root composites using Distinct
Element Method

M.J. Jiang1,2,3*, Y.G. Zhu1,2, B.L. Xi1,2

Abstract. Tree roots play an important role in slope slide prevention. In order to
explore the reinforcement mechanism of pine roots in shallow slopes, a series of
direct shear tests were carried out using Distinct Element Method (DEM). Firstly,
the pine root is simulated with an assembly of bonded particles in which parallel
bond model is used. Then, a series of direct shear tests on the soil-pine root com-
posites were conducted to analyze the effects of the normal stress, the distribution
and the amount of the pine roots on the shear strength. The DEM results show that
the pine roots in the sand can enhance the shear strength significantly; the shear
strength of the pine root-soil composites increases with the increasing normal
stress, the increasing pine root number and the decreasing root inclination angle.

Keywords: direct shear test, composite, shear strength.

1 Introduction

Vegetation has been widely used in shallow landslides prevention. Plant roots play
as a reinforcement material in the root-soil composite [1-3]. The mutual movement
between the root and soil is the main reason why root can enhance the shear
strength of the soil-root composite. This movement leads to the friction between
the roots and soil, which results in great tension in the root and great lateral pres-
sure in the soil [4]. The shear strength of the root-soil composite depends highly on

* Corresponding author. e-mail: mingjing.jiang@tongji.edu.cn

1
Department of Geotechnical Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China
2
Key Laboratory of Geotechnical and Underground Engineering of Ministry of Education,
Tongji University, Shanghai, China
3
State Key Laboratory Disaster Reduction in Civil Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai
200092
2

the interaction between root and soil. Different soil conditions(water content, par-
ticle size distribution) and root traits(diameter, root system) present significant ef-
fects on the root-soil composite mechanism[4].
Roots can sustain tensile, shear, bending stress under different test conditions [4].
Direct shear test has been widely used in studying the root reinforcement in soil.
Wang et al[5] conducted direct shear tests in situ to study the soil fixing capability
of vetiver roots. They concluded that the displacement of soil with vetiver was
shorter than the plain soil under the same normal stress. Zhong et al [6] studied the
reinforcement mechanism of Bermudagrass root in shallow slope under different
water contents. The results showed that the shear strength of root-soil composite
firstly increased and then decreased with the water content. Mickovski and Van
Beek[7] studied the effects of the vertiver root morphology on the shear strength of
root-soil composite. They concluded that blocks of soil permeated with vertiver
roots showed a greater shear strength than the plain soil. Fan and Chen[8] investi-
gated the effects of the root architecture on the shear strength of root-soil compo-
site. The results showed that the plant roots with conspicuous oblique and vertical
roots enhanced the shear strength more than other kind systems of roots. However,
it is a challenge to use the traditional experiments to quantify the mechanical rein-
forcement by roots because of the cumbersome devices, such as the direct shear
test, field shear vane test et al.
Numerical simulations were used widely to study the mechanism between the
roots and soil in recent years for their repeatability and simplicity. Bourrier et al[2]
studied the reinforcement by placing the roots in cohesive and frictional soils
based on the discrete modeling. Mao et al[3] carried out some direct shear tests
with non-branched roots using FEM and DEM, and compared the two methods.
However, there is little research that takes the complicated mechanical responses
of roots in the specific kind of soil into consideration.
In this paper, we focus on the pine roots in sandy soil considering that the pine
trees can survive in various soils (including barren soil) and have a wide distribu-
tion. The direct shear tests are carried out using DEM to analyse the mechanical
responses of the soil-pine root composite. Then the effects of the normal stress,
the distribution and the amount of the pine roots on the shear strength are investi-
gated.

2 Modelling of direct shear tests on rooted soils

2.1 Model of root

In the DEM simulation, the section of the pine root is shown in Fig.1 (a). The di-
ameter is 20mm and the length is 160mm as shown in Fig.1 (b). The diameter is
 3

bigger than the real pine root because the sandy soil modelled here is larger than
that in reality. The roots are assumed to have the same size and the same mechani-
cal characteristics ignoring the difference in diameter for simplicity. Different
from the root bonded with the contact bond by Ibraim[9], the root model in this pa-
per can endure the tension, shear and rotation stress while the one by Ibraim acts
like a flexible cable. The micro parameters in the root model are selected by con-
ducting a series of tensile and compressive tests to match the macro mechanical
parameters of the pine root, as shown in Table 1. It is worth mentioning that the
root axial elastic modulus in compression is assumed to be the same with that in
tension.
The axial elastic modulus (Emod) of the modelled root is defined as follows[2]:
S10mm (1)
E mod E pro
S mod

where E pro and S10mm are the axial elastic modulus and the cross sectional area
of the pine root prototype, and Smod is the cross sectional area of the modelled
root. Then we can get:
Emod 25MPa (2)
The simulation results with different parallel bond strengths are shown in Fig.2.
Fig.2 shows that the tension force increases with the strain linearly at first and
then drops down to 0 when the bond failure happens. The peak tension stress in-
creases with the parallel bond strength. The relationship between the tension
strength and the bond strength is summarized in Fig. 2(b). It can be observed that
the tension strength increases with the parallel bond strength linearly. The 15MPa

Parallel bond
20mm

160mm
(a) (b)
4

Fig.1 Model for root in the DEM

Table 1 Macro mechanical parameters of pine root

Parameter Unit Value

Axial elastic modulus (E) MPa 100

Tensile strength (Tr) MPa 10

Friction coefficient (f) -- 0.7

(a) (b)
Fig.2 The relationship between pb_n and macro root tension strength: (a) DEM tensile tests of
different pb_n; (b) selection of pb_n

(a) (b)
Fig.3 The relationship between pb_kn and macro axial tensile elastic modulus: (a) DEM tensile
tests of different pb_kn; (b) selection of pb_kn.

is selected to model the root which corresponds that the tension strength of the
root is 10 MPa.
The simulation results with different parallel bond stiffness are shown in Fig. 3.
As shown in Fig.3(a), the tension force increases with the strain linearly at first
and then drops down to 0 when the bond failure happens. The axial elastic modu-
lus increases with the parallel bond stiffness. The relationship between the axial
elastic modulus and the bond stiffness is summarized in Fig.3(b), it is shown that
the axial elastic modulus increases with the bond stiffness linearly. Compared to
the elastic modulus of 25MP, the bond stiffness(pb_kn) is chosen as 4000MPa/m.
The normal stiffness of particles(kn) and the bond stiffness define the compressive
 5

modulus of elasticity. Three different root compressive tests are done to get the
suitable micro parameter kn. As the results are shown in Fig.4, the compressive
modulus of elasticity of modelled root increases with kn. Compared to the elastic
modulus of 25MP in reality, we choose kn as 20KPa/m. The micro parameters of
the pine root are shown in Table 2.

(a) (b)
Fig.4 The relationship between kn and macro axial compressive elastic modulus: (a) DEM com-
pressive test of different kn; (b) selection of kn.

Table 2 Micro parameters of pine root in the DEM test

Density (kg/m3) 373 pb_ks 160

D (mm) 20 pb_r 1
kn (N/m) 2e4 pb_n (MPa) 1.5e7
ks (N/m) 1.3e4 pb_s (MPa) 1.5e7
pb_kn (Pa/m) 4e9 u 0.5

2.2 Simulation of direct shear test

The direct shear box consists of two half boxes as shown in Fig.5. The length,
width and height are 0.5m, 0.5m and 0.32m respectively. About 40000 particles
were compressed using UCM[10] to generate a homogeneous sample with the void
ratio 0.82. The assembly was compacted in 5 layers with each layer of 8000 parti-
cles. The void ratio of each layer is 0.87, 0.856, 0.845, 0.835, 0.82 respectively
based on the undercompaction criteria. To save computation time, we choose an
assembly of spheres with diameters from 10mm to 16mm to model the soil. The
grade curve is shown in Fig.6. The micro parameters of the soil used in DEM are
shown in Table 3. The strain rate is 0.2%/s which is defined as that the shear ve-
locity divides the width of the shear box.
Before conducting direct shear tests on root-soil systems, we should place the
root in the middle of the shear box as shown in Fig.7. Firstly the soil particles that
lie in the planned position of the roots are deleted. Then the roots are generated in
6

the void. Three different patterns are adopted, one root in vertical, three roots in ver-
tical and three roots in 45 inclined to the shear direction.

Fig.5 Size of the shear box

Fig.6 Particle size distribution curve for soil in DEM

Table 3 Properties for soil in the DEM tests

Soil type Specific gravity kn(Pa/m) ks(Pa/m) Fric

Sandy soil 2.63 1.5e5 1e5 0.5

(a) (b)
 7

(c)
Fig.7 Shear box size and pine root distribution pattern: (a) one root in vertical distribution; (b)
three roots in vertical distribution; (c) three roots in 45inclined to the shear direction

2.3 DEM simulations of rooted soil

It is necessary to perform direct shear test simulations on sandy soil firstly to ob-
tain the mechanical properties. We choose three different normal stresses (0.5kPa,
1kPa, 2kPa) to model a shallow landslide as same as that Bourrier et al[2] did. The
results are shown in Fig.8. The internal friction angle is about 22and the cohe-
sion is 0 Pa.

(a) (b)
Fig.8 Macro mechanical responses of sandy soil: (a) shear stress versus shear displacement rela-
tionships of modelled sandy soil; (b) strength envelope of modelled sandy soil

(a) (b)
8

(c) (d)
Fig.9 (a-c) curves of root-soil: (a) one-rooted soil in vertical; (b) three-rooted soil in vertical; (c)
three-rooted soil in 45and (d) strength envelope of modelled rooted soil

The results of the three root-soil systems are shown in Fig.9. We can find that the
shear resistance of the three root-soil systems increases with the normal stress. All
the curves exhibit a hardening relationship, the internal friction angle changes little
while the cohesion changes large. The mechanical shear strengths are summarized in
Table 4. The cohesion is 10Pa, 20Pa, 40Pa respectively, while the internal friction
angle is all about 22. The three roots in vertical provide larger reinforcement than
one root in vertical. This is consistent with the results from Zhong et al[6] that the
shear strength increases with the increasing root number. The roots in 45inclined to
the shear direction provide larger reinforcement than three roots in vertical. This is
in agreement with the results from Fan and Chen[8] that the oblique roots enhanced
the shear strength more than roots in vertical. However, the increasing shear
strength in this study is very small. This is because the effects of root expansion and
root hairs which can enhance the strength of root-soil composite in reality are not
taken into consideration in this paper..
Table 4 Macro parameters of shear strength in the DEM test

Root type one root in verti- three roots in verti- three roots in 45
cal cal
CohesionPa 10 20 40
Internal friction angle 22 22 22

3. Conclusions

The pine roots is simulated using parallel bond model by matching the mechanical
characteristic. The root model is used to study the effect of different amount of
pine roots(one root, three roots) and different distribution patterns(vertical distri-
bution, 45inclined to the shear direction) on the mechanical reinforcement. The
results show that pine roots in the sandy soil can enhance the shear strength, the
 9

internal friction angle changes little while the cohesion increases large. The shear
strength of the pine root composites increases with the increasing normal stress,
the increasing root content and the root inclination angle.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the China National Natural Science Foundation
with Grant number 51579178 and State key Lab of Disaster Reduction in Civil
Engineering with Grant number 300 SLDRCE14-A-04 for their financial support
to this study in this paper.

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