SPH-based numerical simulations for large deformation of geomaterial considering soil-structure interaction

The finite element method (FEM) is often used as the conventional method in computational geomechanics. However, dealing with the large deformation and failure is generally a difficult task for FEM since this method is suffered from grid distortions. In order to resolve this problem, the development of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) to simulate large deformation and failure of geomaterials has been presented recently by our group (Bui et al., 2007). As an application of our proposed method to geotechnical engineering, the interaction between soil and solid structure is modelled herein by the SPH method. The Drucker-Prager model with non-associated plastic flow rule is implemented into the SPH-code to describe the elasto-plastic soil behaviour while the solid structure is simulated as an elastic-perfectly plastic material using the Von-Mises yield criterion. The contact between soil and solid structure is modelled by means of coupling condition associated with a Lennard-Jones repulsive force between the two phases. The method is then applied to simulate slope failure and slope with reinforcing pile. Numerical results show that the gross discontinuities failure of geomaterial can be simulated very well through SPH, and the proposed soil-structure interaction algorithm works well in the SPH framework. This suggests that SPH can be applied to model soil-structure interaction in geomechanics.