'Stress-force-fabric' relationship for assemblies of ellipsoids

Stress-force-fabric relationship (S-F-F) stands for the explicitly formulat ed relationship between the components of the stress tensor for an assembly of particles in static equilibrium and anisotropy tensors representing eit her existing or load-induced biases in the spatial distributions of some re levant microscopic parameters. In this paper, the S-F-F relationship is for mulated for ellipsoids and verified using results of three-dimensional nume rical simulations with assemblies of prolate spheroids. The implications of the relationship regarding the effect of particle shape and contributions of different forms of anisotropy to the material shear strength of such ass emblies are discussed. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.