Gene mutation of particle morphology through spherical harmonic-based principal component analysis

Many techniques are developed to reconstruct virtual particles of granular soils. However, the generation of realistic virtual particles involving gene mutations of particle morphology, particularly those at specified relative length scale (RLS), has not fully realised. In this paper, with the spherical harmonic-based principal component analysis (SH-PCA), an additive virtual particle reconstruction technique is proposed. The additive feature of this proposed technique stems from the variation matrix after SH-PCA, in which different principal components correspond to different scale ranges. Based on this additive feature, particle morphology can be reconstructed to any specific RLS. Besides, by introducing scaling factors of different scale ranges, gene-mutated virtual particles can be readily generated, either with a uniform mutation at all RLS or with a singular mutation at any specific RLS. Furthermore, these resulted gene-mutated virtual particles were incorporated into discrete element modelling to investigate the initial packing properties of granular soils.