Figure 14. Normalized contact numbers for three contact types (L-L, L-S and S-S) for different mixtures.
In order to further explore the effect of particle interactions on the shear stress, detailed contact information is extracted from the DEM simulations to illustrate the transmission of force in the system. Contacts in a middle slice within the computational domain (one third of the thickness of the domain), as shown in Figure 15, are displayed by lines that connect the centers between two contacted spheres. The force magnitude is represented by the thickness of the line.