Influence of embedding depth on the pullout of a plate from a confined granular medium
Abstract
Understanding the behaviour of moving objects within confined granular media is important in many technical applications. In this work we study the vertical pullout of a plate-like intruder buried at different depths within a dense granular aggregate from the onset of motion to flow around the intruder in the steady state by means of a two-dimensional polygonal Discrete Element Method. We find that the peak and steady-state drag forces depend differently on their embedding depth for different friction coefficients. Depending on the strength of friction the plate may interact with the domain walls, which enhances the drag force until failure of the aggregate, but not in the steady-state as dilation around intruder directs the force chains emanating from the plate upwards and away from the walls. If the inter-particle friction is weak, it is possible for the overhead pressure to overcome frictional resistance beyond a certain embedding depth. This prevents the formation of dilated failure zones above the intruder and changes the failure mode of the aggregate, leading to a slower decay of the steady-state drag forces with pullout distance.
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BibTeX
@misc{krengel2026influence,
title = {{Influence of embedding depth on the pullout of a plate from a confined granular medium}},
author = {Dominik Krengel and Jian Chen and Shun Nomura and Hidenori Takahashi},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.29016},
eprint = {2610.29016},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.29016},
note = {CC BY-NC-SA 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Influence of embedding depth on the pullout of a plate from a confined granular medium
AU - Dominik Krengel
AU - Jian Chen
AU - Shun Nomura
AU - Hidenori Takahashi
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/21
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.29016
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.29016
AB - Understanding the behaviour of moving objects within confined granular media is important in many technical applications. In this work we study the vertical pullout of a plate-like intruder buried at different depths within a dense granular aggregate from the onset of motion to flow around the intruder in the steady state by means of a two-dimensional polygonal Discrete Element Method. We find that the peak and steady-state drag forces depend differently on their embedding depth for different friction coefficients. Depending on the strength of friction the plate may interact with the domain walls, which enhances the drag force until failure of the aggregate, but not in the steady-state as dilation around intruder directs the force chains emanating from the plate upwards and away from the walls. If the inter-particle friction is weak, it is possible for the overhead pressure to overcome frictional resistance beyond a certain embedding depth. This prevents the formation of dilated failure zones above the intruder and changes the failure mode of the aggregate, leading to a slower decay of the steady-state drag forces with pullout distance.
ER -