Breakage-induced evolution of particle sizedistribution (PSD) has a significant impact on the physical and mechanicalproperties of soil. It is therefore of great practical significance to studythe evolution of particle breakage. The gradation transition matrix provides aneffective approach to describing the detailed particle breakage of granularsoils. This paper presents a series of  one-dimensionalcompression tests on carbonate sands with different initial conditions(i.e.

PSD

relative density) to establish the gradation transition matrix ofsample with more detailed information on particle breakage of each size group. Thebreakage of each single-sized particles of soil samples with multi-sizedparticles under different initial conditions is explored based on the dyeingand PCAS image recognition technologies. The results show that the presence ofsmall-sized particles plays a negative effect on the breakage of thelarge-sized particles

while the presence of large-sized particles promotes thebreakage of the small-sized particles. The PSD of each single-sized particlesof a carbonate sand sample evolves towards the fractal distribution

and therelative breakage index  B  of each singlesize group is linear with the input work per unit volume W . Finally

the breakage transition matrices of bothuniformly and non-uniformly graded carbonate sands are established withconsideration of interactions between particles with different sizes

whichdemonstrates its satisfactory performance. The proposed method provides a newinsight into the evolution of particle breakage of granular soils with moredetailed information of each size group.