Abstract
Particle degradation and fracture play an important role in natural granular flows and in many applications of granular materials. We analyze the fracture properties of two-dimensional disklike particles modeled as aggregates of rigid cells bonded along their sides by a cohesive Mohr-Coulomb law and simulated by the contact dynamics method. We show that the compressive strength scales with tensile strength between cells but depends also on the friction coefficient and a parameter describing cell shape distribution. The statistical scatter of compressive strength is well described by the Weibull distribution function with a shape parameter varying from 6 to 10 depending on cell shape distribution. We show that this distribution may be understood in terms of percolating critical intercellular contacts. We propose a random-walk model of critical contacts that leads to particle size dependence of the compressive strength in good agreement with our simulation data.