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Material point method simulation of triaxial shear tests

Conference Paper · September 2014

DOI: 10.1201/b17435-26

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 Computer Methods and Recent Advances in Geomechanics – Oka, Murakami, Uzuoka & Kimoto (Eds.)
© 2015 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-00148-0

Material point method simulation of triaxial shear tests

W.T. Sołowski
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Aalto University, Finland,1

S.W. Sloan
ARC Centre of Excellence for Geotechnical Science and Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment,
University of Newcastle, Australia

D. Wang
ARC Centre of Excellence for Geotechnical Science and Engineering, Centre for Offshore Foundation Systems, The
University of Western Australia, Australia

ABSTRACT: The paper presents a number of numerical simulations of triaxial shear tests. The simulations
have been made with the Generalised Interpolation Material Point method (GIMP, Bardenhagen & Kober 2004),
which allows for modelling of large displacements, such as those occurring in shear bands. The simulations
are assessed qualitatively and compared with available numerical results. Unconstrained compression tests on
unsaturated soil specimens are also simulated. In all the analyses, the Mohr-Coulomb model, extended into the
unsaturated regime, was used.
The paper is part of a joint research program in the Centre for Geotechnical Science and Engineering which
aims to assess and to validate the material point method for engineering purposes.

1 INTRODUCTION all the information required for the analysis (physical

Numerical simulation of shear-banding and triaxial
tests has been a lively research field. These have been
attempted using the discrete element method (DEM)
(e.g. Li et al. 2006, Winduliñski et al. 2009, Lee et al.
2012, Kim et al. 2013) as well as with finite elements
(e.g. Tejchman & Górski 2010).
The paper aims to assess whether the material point
method may be used for the simulation of tri-axial
shear tests. It initially validates the material point
method by applying it to a problem with a known
solution. Later, an extended Mohr-Coulomb model,
which includes an increase in shear resistance due to
suction, is used to replicate the unconstrained shear-
ing tests performed by Colmenares (1997). The paper
extends the investigation of the material point method
summarised in Sołowski & Sloan (under review).
1.1 Material Point Method
The material point method is a new numerical method
which natively handles contact and large deforma-
tions. The method is a continuous method, similar to
the finite element method or finite difference method.
However, in the material point method, instead of ele-
ments one deals with material points, which carry
quantities like mass, momentum, stress and parameters
required by the constitutive model). In every time-step,
the material points pass the necessary information to
the computational grid (which is most often held con-
stant during the calculations). The time step data is
resolved on the grid and passed back to the mate-
rial points. The material points positions, momenta,
stresses and internal variables are then updated and
the time advances.
The material point method originates from the FLIP
method (Brackbill & Ruppel 1986) and was first pro-
posed by Sulsky et al. (1994, 1995). The original
version of the method suffered from a number of draw-
backs. In particular, when the deformations were too
large, the material points may lose contact with each
other. The occurrence of this effect is heavily depen-
dent on the underlying density of the grid. The first
major improvement was made when the Generalized
Interpolation Material Point Method (GIMP) was pro-
posed (Bardenhagen & Kober 2004). GIMP is the
version of material point method used in all the calcu-
lations in this paper. Although other potentially better
material point schemes exist (e.g. Sadeghirad et al.
2011, 2013), their implementations in numerical codes
needs further improvement before they can be widely
adopted.

1
Formerly University of Newcastle, Australia

169
Figure 1. Initial two-dimensional sample (left) and sample
after shearing. Displacements of material points shown.
Figure 2. Material point method results compared to results
in Kardanie et al. (2012) and limit analysis.
2 VERIFICATION OF THE SIMULATION
AGAINST AVAILABLE DATA
The initial task was to find out whether the GIMP is
a useful tool for simulating triaxial shearing. To ver-
ify the method, an example with an accurate known
solution was chosen (Kardani et al. 2012).
2.1 Two-dimensional tests
The bi-axial shear test was performed on a 2:1
(height:width) slice of Mohr-Coulomb material (Kar-
dani et al. 2012). The location of the shear band was
enforced by introducing a small triangle of slightly
weaker material, exactly replicating the Kardani et
al. (2012) plane strain simulation (see Table 1 for
the material properties). The material point simu-
lation used 80,000 points, with 4 material points
allocated to each grid cell (see Fig 1). Surprisingly, the
material point method yielded a quite different force-
displacement curve and limit load to the finite element
results of Kardani et al. 2012 (see Figure 2).
170
Figure 3. Velocities of material points at final stages of
shearing for a three-dimensional analysis. Material properties
as in Table 1.
Investigating this issue further, another set of solu-
tions using finite element limit analysis was obtained
(note that the approximate limit analysis solution,
which takes into account a non-associated flow rule
using the approach of Davis (1968), is almost the same
as the solution for the associated case for the param-
eters chosen). The limit analysis solution agrees well
with that from the material point method. The reason
for the discrepancy between the results published by
Kardani et al. (2012) and the other results is not yet
fully understood.
2.2 Three-dimensional tests
The results from three-dimensional material point sim-
ulations (where the force was applied via a slightly
oversized rigid plate with frictionless contact) were
also compared to the limit analysis solutions (see Fig.
2 and Fig. 3 for a sheared sample). The solution for
the selected model parameters is virtually the same as
in the two-dimensional case. The analysis confirmed
that, in the case of the Mohr-Coulomb constitutive
model for the parameters used, the two-dimensional
simulation approximates the three-dimensional case
rather well.
2.3 Summary of the verification tests
The results shown suggest that the material point
method is well suited for the simulation of triaxial
tests. The ability to natively model large displace-
ments, without the need for remeshing, appears to give
Table 1. Mohr-Coulomb material properties. Table 2. Simplified van Genuchten water retention curve
parameters.
Young Friction Dilation
Modulus Poisson Cohesion angle angle m n α [kPa−1 ]
E ratio* c φ ψ
Material [kPa] ν [kPa] [deg] [deg] 0.531235 1.760144 0.001479

Stronger 1,000 0.3 5.5 10◦ 5◦

Weaker 1,000 0.3 5.0 10◦ 5◦

* Not given in Kardani et al. (2012).

this method an edge over the classical finite element

approach for this case.

3 SIMULATIONS OF UNCONSTRAINED
SHEAR TESTS FOR UNSATURATED SOIL
SAMPLES

The primary assumption made here is that the water

phase in the unsaturated soil sample is not continuous,
so the suction can be different at different points of the
sample. Furthermore, it has been assumed that the rate
of shearing is quick, so the water transport within the
soil sample is small. The updated degree of saturation
was computed as:

Figure 4. Approximate water retention curve based on the

laboratory data from Cunningham (2000). van Genuchten
parameters are given in Table 2.

account for differences of the retention behaviour upon

where the previous degree of saturation Sr , the previ-
ous specific volume v and the updated specific volume
vnew are known, and the unknowns are the fraction vol-
ume of water Vw , the fraction volume of air Va at the
updated specific volume vnew and the updated degree
of saturation Sr,new . This way of computing suction
allows for some water transport within the sample due
to the way Va is computed (i.e. using the degree of sat-
uration from the previous time-step) which lowers the
air volume and thus reduces the degree of saturation
somewhat.
The degree of saturation Sr can be linked to the
change of suction via the water retention curve. Finally,
the change of suction can be linked to the shear strength
via the extended Mohr-Coulomb equation (Fredlund &
Rahardjo 1993):
drying and wetting and directly links suction and the
degree of saturation according to:
where α, m and n are model parameters. These parame-
ters were chosen using a least squares procedure based
on number of laboratory tests reported by Cunningham
(2000), see Fig. 4. The van Genuchten parameters used
in all subsequent calculations are given in Table 2.
During the calculations, the suction friction angle
was assumed to be 14◦ . Before calling the stress
integration algorithm, the unsaturated capability was
introduced by calculating the cohesion c for the
current value of suction using the relation:

where σ is the total stress, s denotes matrix suction,

and φb is the friction angle relative to matrix suction. As the stress integration algorithm is implicit (follow-
The water retention was predicted using the sim- ing the work of Clausen et al. 2006, 2007), such an
plified van Genuchten (1980) model, which does not increase fits into its framework without any alteration.

171
Table 3. Mohr-Coulomb material properties. Table 4. Unconfined shearing results.

Bulk Shear Friction Dilation Suction Peak deviatoric stress

modulus modulus Cohesion angle angle friction
K G c φ ψ angle φb Experiment Simulation
[MPa] [MPa] [kPa] [deg] [deg] [deg] Test Initial (Colmenares
suction 1997) 2D 3D 3D*
5 2 20 31 14 14 [kPa] [kPa] [kPa] [kPa] [kPa]

1 20.15 65.92 92.4 93.8 100.1

2 26.57 80.3 97.3 100.0 100.2
3 56.81 109.91 123.8 127.7 100.2
3.1 Simulations of unconstrained unsaturated soil
4 68.74 151.79 134.1 137.4 101.4
samples shearing with the Mohr-Coulomb 5 200.75 281 259.1 248.9 199.2
model 6 314.53 453.27 372.6 347.2 288.4
Based on the results of Cunningham (1997) and Col- 7 527.13 595.63 578.3 530.8 451.0
8 690.3 640.83 715.5 648.4 562.2
menares (2000) (who tested exactly the same soil),
9 944.23 778.95 890.8 817.3 736.5
the cohesion and friction angle for the Mohr-Coulomb 10 1060.7 865.93 957.5 879.7 809.3
model were set (see Table 3). The bulk modulus value 11 1127.6 925.34 990.8 902.6 847.7
was chosen to be low, mainly because of the very large
strains upon shearing (reaching 15%) and the fact that *indicates simulations with no water transport
the samples were unconstrained. The parameters given
in Table 3 were used to run 11 shearing tests, replicat-
ing the laboratory work of Colmenares (1997). All the
laboratory tests were made on unconstrained cylindri-
cal samples with a diameter of 38mm and a height of
78 mm. These samples were modelled using the mate-
rial point method, in two and three dimensions. The
two-dimensional sample consisted of 80,000 material
points (with 4 points per grid cell), whereas the three-
dimensional samples were constructed from 105,600
material points with 8 particles per grid cell. The max-
imum deviatoric stress obtained in the simulations is
listed in Table 3 and shown in Fig. 5.
The shearing modes change with increases in suc-
tion (see Figures 7–10). The shear-banding is well
pronounced at low suctions (alongside dilation in the
shear-bands leading to an increase in suction), whereas Figure 5. Peak deviatoric stress in 2D and 3D simulations
at high suctions the elastic behaviour of the sample is compared to the experimental data (Colmenares 1997).
dominant, leading to a barrel-shaped deformed sample
at the maximum strain of 15%.
In the simulations the shear-band was initiated by The results obtained are given in Figure 6. Despite
introducing a small wedge of weaker material, similar an early overshoot of the shear strength, the results
to that shown in Fig. 1. Despite the slightly weaker obtained with no water transport could be possibly
material, the other shear-band direction competes with improved by increasing the suction friction angle φb
the preferred shear-band in the simulation. slightly.

3.2 Simulations of unconstrained unsaturated soil

samples shearing with no water transport 3.3 Discussion of results

In addition, three-dimensional simulations under the
assumption of no water transport have been made. This
has been achieved by substituting eq. 2 with:
The Mohr-Coulomb parameters were kept unchanged
(see Table 3) with the exception of the dilation angle
which was set to zero. The latter was necessary to
obtain results without excessive suction in the shear
band, which would cause unrealistic shear strengths.
The agreement between the predictions and the lab-
oratory data is good, especially in the case of the
three-dimensional analyses. It is interesting to note
that the difference between the three-dimensional and
two-dimensional plane strain analyses is more substan-
tial than in the earlier simulation. This may be caused
by different volume changes in the shearing region,
leading to different suction distributions and therefore
different final shear strengths. Especially at high suc-
tions, the shear-bands are not fully developed at 15%
strain and the sample becomes barrel-shaped. This is in
contrast to shearing at low suction, where at the same
amount of strain the shear bands are well developed

172
Figure 6. Peak deviatoric stress in 3D simulations compared
to the experimental data (Colmenares 1997).

Figure 8. Sample suction at 15% strain. Initial suction

1127.6 kPa.

Figure 7. Sample suction at 15% strain. Initial suction

20.15 kPa.

and significant dilation occurs in them (compare Figs

7–10). Nonetheless, the explanation of the differences
between the two- and three-dimensional simulations
is speculative, and the phenomenon needs further
investigation.
It appears that the differences between the pre-
dicted peak deviatoric stresses and the experimental Figure 9. Sample suction at 15% strain. Initial suction
values are acceptable. However, the suctions predicted 20.15 kPa.
in the shearing zone are too small for low suctions.
In the samples with high suctions, the experimental provided a constitutive model which can better predict
data show that the suction decreases substantially upon the soil volume changes is used.
shearing whereas the numerical models predict that it
either increases marginally or stays constant.
Finally, the assumptions regarding water transport 4 CONCLUSIONS
need to be revisited and re-evaluated using further cal-
culations. It may be possible to assume that no water Reproducing unconfined shear tests numerically is dif-
transport occurs within the sample during shearing, ficult. The results presented are a first step in this

173

Figure 10. Sample suction at 15% strain. Initial suction
1127.6 kPa.
direction using the material point method, and show
that the technique can accommodate large strains. To
increase the accuracy of the results, a constitutive
model which predicts the soil volume changes bet-
ter is needed. Also, due to the very high nonlinearity
of the tested soil in the elastic region, incorporating
non-linear elastic behaviour may improve the quality
of the predictions.
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