Insights into the compressive and tensile strengths of viscocohesive–frictional particle agglomerates

Viscocohesive–frictional particle agglomerates such as cohesive powder mixtures, clusters of cemented granular materials, and iron-ores are commonly found in civil engineering and industries. The compressive and tensile properties of these agglomerates commonly reveal complex behavior, but our understanding of their mechanical strengths is still limited. In this paper, we numerically explore the diametrical compression test of viscocohesive–frictional particle agglomerates by means of the discrete element method, where the system composes of primary spherical particles and systematically varying different values of the cohesive and viscous stress between grains. We impose different compressive downward velocities which apply on the top platen, whereas the bottom platen is immobilized, leading to different compressive and tensile responses of such agglomerates. Based on the previous definition of the dimensionless impact parameter of agglomerates impacting on a rigid plane (Vo in Phys. Rev. E 103:042902), which helps to get a unified description of both compressive and tensile strengths of viscocohesive–frictional particle agglomerates under diametrical compression test by the same quadratic increasing function form. This unified controlling can be well explained due to the unified representation of the densities, intensities, and orientations of the normal forces between grains, leading to robustly providing physical insights into the mechanical strength of agglomerates presented in civil engineering and industries.