Abstract Soil-rock mixture is a special engineering geological material, which is composed with high strength rock and low strength soil. Direct shear test is an effective approach to investigate the mechanical characteristics of soil-rock mixture. In this paper, we adopt spherical elements to simulate soil material, and irregular overlapped clumps to simulate the rock rubble with Discrete Element Model (DEM). The shear strength of soil-rock mixture is obtained with direct shear tests based on DEM simulation under different rock contents and inter-particle bonding strengths. The results show that the shear strength of soil-rock mixture increases with increasing either of the rock content and the bonding strength. Moreover, the internal friction angle and the cohesive strength of soil-rock mixture are determined with DEM simulation under various rock contents. The results above will be benefit to reveal the shear strength of soil-rock mixture.
2014, Vol. 35 
