In-plane shear loading of granular membranes modeled as a Lagrangian assembly of rotating elastic particles

A micro-mechanical model devoted to study large deformations of cohesive granular media subjected to quasi-static external actions is presented and discussed. The model, leaving out dynamical effects, is completely described by the definition of the strain energy of the interaction between two nearby grains. The solution of the nonlinear equilibrium system of equations is searched in the framework of a stepwise analysis which uses Newton's iterative strategy as the predictor and Rik's arc-length idea as the corrector. Selected numerical simulation results are discussed to highlight the main peculiarities of the model and the analysis strategy of the obtained results. The discussions suggest the necessary next steps for tackling more complex problems such as those which consider the failure of grain interactions.