An earthquake refers to volcanic or magmatic activity or any other sudden stress changes in the earth which can result in instability, liquefaction and ground settlement. Past studies show that liquefaction and instability of granular soils are not the only consequence of earthquakes. Significant advances have been made in the past few decades to understand the effect of various soil characteristics (e.g. size, mineralogy, fines content) and boundary conditions on their role on the instability and liquefaction susceptibility of geomaterials. However, studies on the impact of particle shape on the mechanical characteristics of granular material has been relatively less documented and is therefore, unclear. The current experimental study deals with the above problem, where, three materials having different shapes (crushed glass, Rhein sand and round glass beads) but possessing the same uniformity coefficient and mean grain size were used. The materials were thoroughly washed in a 0.063 mm sieve to eliminate fines. Experiments were conducted using the monotonic triaxial (both drained and undrained) and direct shear devices available at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. No significant particle breakage was observed throughout the entire test program for the three materials. The results of our experiments showed the significant influence of the grain shape on the mechanical characteristics of sands (e.g. shear strength, peak friction and dilation angle). The analysis of results showed a possible correlation between the mechanical and intrinsic characteristics of granular material and the particle shapes.