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Summary: After placement of cemented tailings backfill (CTB), which is a mixture of tailings (man‐made soil), water, and binder, into underground mined‐out voids (stopes), the hydration reaction of the binder converts the capillary water into chemically bound water, which results in the reduction of the water content in the pores of the CTB, thereby causing a reduction in the pore‐water pressure in the CTB (self‐desiccation). Self‐desiccation has a significant impact on the pore‐water pressure and effective stress development in CTB and paramount and practical importance for the stability assessment and design of CTB structures and barricades. However, self‐desiccation in CTB structures is complex because it is a function of the multiphysics or coupled (i.e., thermal, hydraulic, mechanical, and chemical) processes that occur in CTB. To understand the self‐desiccation behavior of CTB, an integrated multiphysics model of self‐desiccation is developed in this study, which fully considers the coupled thermal, hydraulic, mechanical, and chemical processes and the consolidation process in CTB. All model coefficients are determined in measurable parameters. Moreover, the predictive ability of the model is verified with extensive case studies. A series of engineering issues are examined with the validated model to investigate the self‐desiccation process in CTB structures with respect to the changes in the mixture recipe, backfilling, and the surrounding rock and curing conditions. The obtained results provide in‐depth insight into the self‐desiccation behavior of CTB structures. The developed multiphysics model is therefore a potential tool for assessing and predicting self‐desiccation in CTB structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of deposition process and particle characteristics, granular materials can be inherently anisotropic. Many researchers have strongly suggested that the inherent anisotropy is the main reason for the deformation non-coaxiality of granular materials. However, their relationships are not unanimous because of the limited understanding of the non-coaxial micro-mechanism. In this study, we investigated the influence of inherent anisotropy on the non-coaxial angle using the discrete element method. Firstly, we developed a new discrete element method approach using rough elliptic particles and proposed a novel method to produce anisotropic specimens. Secondly, the effects of initial specimen density and particle characteristics, such as particle aspect ratio Am, rolling resistance coefficient β, and bedding plane orientation δ, were examined by a series of biaxial tests and rotational principal axes tests. Findings from the numerical simulations are summarized as follows: (1) the peak internal friction angle ϕp and the non-coaxial angle i both increase with the initial density, Am and β, and they both increase initially and then decrease with δ in the range of 0-90°; (2) among the particle characteristics, the influence of Am is the most significant; and (3) for anisotropic specimens, the non-coaxial angle can be calculated using the double slip and rotation rate model. Then, an empirical formula was proposed based on the simulation results to depict the relationship between the non-coaxial angle and the particle characteristics. Finally, the particle-scale mechanism of non-coaxiality for granular materials was discussed from the perspective of energy dissipation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]