AE Signature Interpretation of Single Particle Crushing under Uniaxial Compression

Granular soils exhibit particle crushing under certain loading circumstances, and it significantly affects their mechanical behaviour. However, the estimation of the particle crushing is extremely challenging. Therefore, new a technic based on passive non-destructive Acoustic Emission (AE) monitoring is explored to infer the extent and evolution of soil’s particle size distribution. However, in this paper only individual particles under uniaxial compression are studied and the results should inform the interpretation of the laboratory tests on small scale soil samples. Different material types from rigid to soft and brittle to ductile are used in order to probe the AE characteristics and deduce the AE signature attached to various particle crushing mechanisms. The particle size and material type are the main parameters considered, and clear variation of the AE signal characteristics are detected. These encouraging findings on the use of AE monitoring system offer the possibility to identify the micro crushing event of soil particle in the macro soils.