Date Approved

12-31-2005

Embargo Period

4-18-2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.S. in Engineering

Department

Electrical & Computer Engineering

College

Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering

Advisor

Mandayam, Shreekanth

Subject(s)

Aggregates (Building materials); Computer algorithms

Disciplines

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Abstract

There exists considerable evidence that the shear behavior and flow behavior of granular materials is significantly dependent on particle morphology. However, quantification of this dependence is a challenging task owing to a dearth of quantitative models for describing particle shape and the difficulty of modeling angular particle assemblies. The situation becomes more complex when discrete element analyses of realistic 3-D particle shapes are required. The thesis attempts to address this problem by adapting the algebraic reconstruction technique (ART) to synthesize composite 3-D granular particles from statistically obtained 3-D shape descriptors of the particles in an aggregate mixture. This thesis extends previous work where it was demonstrated that the 3-D shape characteristics of particles in an aggregate mixture can be numerically expressed by statistical models obtained from 2-D projective representations of multiple particles in the mixture.

In this thesis, attempts were made to validate the premise that multiple projective representations of multiple particles could be used to synthesize a composite 3-D particle that represents the entire mixture in terms of its 3-D shape descriptors. Also, single particles isolated from the aggregate mix were scanned using optical and X-ray tomography techniques to generate 2-D multiple projections and synthesize the 3-D particle shape. This research work proves useful for generating realistic shapes for discrete element applications or in obtaining more fundamental understanding of the micromechanics of granular solids.

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