Abstract:Contact forces acted on representative pentagons were achieved through fringe analysis based on the photoelastic experiment of pentagons subject to loading and unloading. The evolution of contact forces reveal that residual contact force lies remarkably in contacts between deepburied pentagons while barely in contacts between superficial pentagons during unloading. Photoelastic experiment was reproduced via discrete element simulation, and the comparison of both interparticle contact force between photoelastic test and numerical test demonstrates that the numerical model is reasonable. Besides, the stress evolution of pentagon packings during loading and unloading was studied. The results indicate that the spatial distributions of stress and force chain, residual stress and residual contact force are consistent.