Understanding the micromechanical origin of liquefaction in silty soils using advanced computational approach

This project aims to develop a reliable and efficient numerical tool for large scale failure analysis of soil liquefaction informed by understanding of the liquefaction process at the grain scale. The project can be separated into three main phases. Task 1 is the development of a combined SPH-DEM method capable of modelling silty soils at the grain-scale. Task 2 is to use the coupled numerical tool to develop a novel multiphase continuum model informed by an updated view of grain-scale physical processes of liquefaction in silty soils, enabled by the combined numerical tool. Task 3 is to integrate the continuum model into the SPH framework, enabling large-scale simulation and prediction of liquefaction induced failure. Our work in 2019 was aimed at completing tasks 1 and 2 of the project. This year, the project will focus on the application of the parallelised SPH-DEM tool to investigate the grain-scale features leading to the liquefaction of silty soils and several large-scale geotechnical applications.