PFC3D simulation of a compressed steel column

PFC3D (Itasca 2018) is a DEM software suited for geotechnical problems useful to describe the discrete nature of the soil. PFC3D is commonly used in granular and rock-mechanics problems in which the rock behavior is simulated with an assembly of particles. Rarely PFC3D is used to model a continuous material like structural elements. In usual practice, structural parts are modeled in PFC3D with continuous rigid elements which can translate and rotate and are not able to deform or bend. In order to have a structural part with bending resistance is necessary to model it with discon-tinuous elements. This problem of modeling is particularly visible when rigid gabions are studied. Gabions are formed by welded steel grids hooked to each other to form a box. Grids have their own bending resistance and they need to be treated as a continuous element. The steel box (Le-drosteel box 2019) is then filled with rock aggregates which are more suited for discrete modeling. The response of the steel can be simplified breaking the grids down into vertical columns and stud-ying the behavior of a single steel wire column. In this paper the compression behavior of a grid steel wire is presented. The problem carries out the analysis presented in the Verification Problems of the PFC 6.0 interactive help menu.