The Effective Elastic Moduli of Model Sediments

Abstract

As a rather idealized model of an ocean sediment, we take a fluid-saturated packing of like elastic spheres and present a method for calculating the effective elastic moduli of such packings. In particular, the method is applied to the cubic packing to obtain certain new results relating to just one of the moduli, namely the one corresponding to a vertical compression. Two cases are considered; one being when the packing is subjected to a uniform compressive force and the second when the packing is at rest under gravity.