Effective properties of a cemented or an injected granular material

In this paper the macroscopic elastic properties of injected or cemented sands are derived from the characteristics of the constituents and the analysis of the microstructure using a multi-scale modelling approach. Particular interest is given to the choice of the representative elementary volume, by relying on existing microstructural data. The periodic homogenization is adopted and required numerical solutions are performed by the finite element method. An assessment of the validity of the multi-scale approach is achieved through comparison with theoretical and experimental results on cemented and injected granular media reported in the literature. The capabilities of the model are also used to investigate the influence of geometrical and mechanical microscale parameters on the macroscopic behaviour of the treated materials. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.