ABSTRACT
The paper is concerned with numerical investigations of the behaviour of granular bodies during shearing. Shearing of an infinite narrow layer of sand between two very rough boundaries under constant vertical stress is numerically modelled with a finite element method and a polar hypoplastic constitutive relation. The relation was laid down within a polar (Cosserat) continuum and includes a characteristic length in the form of a mean grain diameter. The attention is laid on the influence of the initial void ratio and layer height on the thickness of a shear zone and behaviour of polar quantities.
