Résumé
Wheat grains can be considered as a natural cemented granular material. They are milled under highforces to produce food products such as flour. The major part of the grain is the so-called starchy endosperm.It contains stiff starch granules, which show a multi-modal size distribution, and a softer protein matrix thatsurrounds the granules. Experimental milling studies and numerical simulations are going hand in hand tobetter understand the fragmentation behavior of this biological material and to improve milling performance.We present a numerical study of the effect of granule size distribution on the strength of such a cementedgranular material. Samples of bi-modal starch granule size distribution were created and submitted to uniaxialtension, using a peridynamics method. We show that, when compared to the effects of starch-protein interfaceadhesion and voids, the granule size distribution has a limited effect on the samples’ yield stress.