A three-dimensional FEM code for non-linear coupled geomechanical problems

Nicolò Spiezia, Nico De Marchi, Valentina Salomoni, Carmelo Majorana

University of Padova

 

Many geomechanical problems are characterized by material and geometric non-linearities, arising from plastic behavior and large deformations/displacements of the solid. Furthermore, the presence of fluid within the skeleton and the interaction between the fluid and the solid phases must be taken into account.
This work presents a fully coupled three-dimensional mathematical model for solid-displacements/fluid-diffusion problems, taking into account finite strain elasto-plasticity.

The model is solved within the framework of Finite Element, which is an extremely powerful tool to predict the mechanical behavior of the soil/fluid mixture in real geotechnical applications.

The resulting FEM software is an open-source code developed with Matlab platform, and it offers several graphical functions to help the users in the three-dimensional visualization of the results. Numerical examples of consolidation problems, with and without non-linearities, show the capability and the efficiency of the code.

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