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CH041
CH041
ABSTRACT: Finite element analysis of the penetration of a solid object into a soil layer is probably one of
the most sophisticated and challenging problems in numerical analysis. In this study the Arbitrary Lagrangian-
Eulerian method is employed to study numerically the penetration of a free falling penetrometer into a layer of
soil. It is shown that this method can simulate deep penetration of objects into layers of soil accurately. Good
agreement has been found between the numerical predictions and experimental results.
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material displacements, velocities and accelerations, of the problem, and hence can be easily implemented
respectively, ρ and c are the material density and damp- in existing finite element codes. For more details see
ing, b is the body force, q is the surface load acting on Nazem et al. (2006 & 2008).
area S of volume V , δgN and δgT are the virtual normal
and tangential gap displacements, tN and tT denote the
2.3 Stress integration
normal and tangential forces at the contact surface Sc .
After solving equation (1), the UL step is usually final- In a large deformation analysis, the stress-strain rela-
ized by updating the spatial coordinates of the nodal tions must be frame independent to guarantee that
points according to incremental displacements. possible rigid body motions do not induce extra strains
However, the continuous updating of nodal coordi- within the material. This requirement, known as the
nates at the end of each increment alone may cause principle of objectivity, is usually satisfied by intro-
mesh distortion in regions with relatively high defor- ducing an objective stress-rate into the constitutive
mation gradients. Hence, in the next step, the distorted equations. An important feature of an objective stress-
mesh is refined using a suitable mesh refinement rate is that it does not change the values of stress
technique. In this refinement process all variables at invariants. This guarantees that a previously yielded
nodal points as well as at integration points are trans- point remains on the yield surface after being updated
ferred from the old (distorted) mesh into the new due to rigid body motion. Introducing, for instance,
(refined) mesh. This remapping is usually done using the Jaumann stress rate into the constitutive equations
the convection equation: provides:
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2. Compute the strain increments and integrate the
constitutive equations to update the stresses and
hardening parameters.
3. Iterate until the unbalanced forces are smaller than
a prescribed tolerance.
4. Update the material coordinates according to the
incremental displacements.
II. Phase 2- Eulerian step
1. Check the boundaries and relocate the nodes on the
boundaries wherever necessary.
2. Compute the new mesh coordinates by performing
an elastic analysis.
3. Remap the state variables at integration points as
well as at nodal points using equation (1).
4. Update the total displacements vector according to
the new mesh displacements and previous material
displacements.
5. Set the material coordinates equal to the mesh
coordinates for the next time step.
6. Compute internal forces, check equilibrium as
well as plasticity consistency and conduct further
iterations if necessary.
3 NUMERICAL ANALYSIS
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Table 1. Experimental validation of ALE predictions. ALE method can be used to analyse the problem accu-
rately. The accuracy of the method was verified by
su,ref d m v0 p/d p/d comparing numerical results with those obtained from
No kPa mm g m/s tests ALE the experimental tests.
The results obtained also indicate that the total pen-
1 5.15 20 262 4.77 4.33 3.99
etration depth depends on the strain rates developed
2 5.15 20 353 4.77 4.80 5.22
3 5.15 20 446 4.75 5.20 6.50 in the soil. Larger values of the rate parameter will
4 5.15 20 539 4.74 7.05 7.80 result generally in smaller values of the total depth of
5 5.15 20 631 4.76 7.94 9.36 penetration.
6 7.46 40 714 4.77 1.14 1.39 It is also noted that the analyses conducted in this
7 6.91 40 713 4.75 1.39 1.44 study assumed zero friction between the penetrometer
8 6.91 30 736 4.75 2.75 2.71 and soil. The effect of friction will be investigated in
9 4.45 20 257 4.75 4.45 4.38 future work, but it is noted that previous studies have
indicated that its influence on penetrometers and other
objects moving through soil is not usually dominant,
at least in clay-like soils. Examples can be seen in
static CPT tests where the magnitude of the side fric-
tion force is usually much small than the overall end
bearing resistance, and in the theoretical solution for
the T-bar test, where the non-dimensional resistance
factors vary from about 9 to 11, i.e., about 20% differ-
ence at most, depending on the assumption made about
the level of adhesive resistance (Randolph & Houlsby
1986). However, it is also noted that this outcome is
likely to depend on the shape of the object penetrating
the soil.
REFERENCES
Figure 2. Normalised kinetic energy versus normalised Carter, J.P., Nazem, M., Airey, D.W. & Chow, S.W. 2010.
penetration, assuming Eu /su,ref = 200, su,ref = 25 kPa and Dynamic analysis of free-falling penetrometers in soil
d = 4 cm. deposits. Plenary paper accepted for presentation at
GeoFlorida 2010, ASCE, Feb. 2010.
Graham, J., Crooks, J.H.A. & Bell, A.L. 1983. Time effects on
energy and soil properties. Among these parameters, the stress–strain behaviour of natural soft clays. Géotech-
we show the effect of rate parameter, λ, on penetra- nique, 33, 327–340.
tion values. For brevity, attention is confined to cases Nazem, M., Sheng, D., & Carter, J.P. 2006. Stress integra-
where Eu /su,ref = 200, d = 4 cm and su,ref = 25 kPa. tion and mesh refinement in numerical solutions to large
Normalised kinetic energy versus normalised pene- deformations in geomechanics. International Journal for
Numerical Methods in Engineering, 65, 1002–1027.
tration is plotted in Figure 2 for different values of
Nazem, M., Sheng, D., Carter, J.P., & Sloan, S.W. 2008. Arbi-
λ, including 0.0, 0.1 and 0.2. Figure 2 shows that trary Lagrangian-Eulerian method for large-deformation
increasing the value of the rate parameter λ decreases consolidation problems in geomechanics. International
the final penetration depth significantly and this is Journal for Analytical and Numerical Methods in Geome-
because large values of λ correspond to soils that are chanics, 32, 1023–1050.
effectively stronger during rapid undrained shearing. Nazem, M., Carter, J.P., & Airey, D.W. 2009a. Arbitrary
Lagrangian-Eulerian Method for dynamic analysis of
Geotechnical Problems. Computers and Geotechnics, 36
4 CONCLUSIONS (4), 549–557.
Nazem, M., Sheng, D., Carter, J.P., & Sloan, S.W. 2009b.
Alternative stress-integration schemes for large defor-
A robust finite element procedure based upon the mation problems of solid mechanics. Finite Elements in
Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) operator split Analysis and Design, 45, 934–943.
technique has been presented and the method has been Randolph, M.F & Houlsby, G.T. 1986. The limiting pres-
used to predict the penetration of a free falling pen- sure on a circular pile loaded laterally in cohesive soil,
etrometer (FFP) into the seabed. It was shown that the Géotechnique, 34 (4), 613–623.
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