Large deformation soil-structure interaction modelling

Contact/s: Professor Will Coombs, Professor Charles Augarde

Soil-structure interaction problems are ubiquitous in geotechnical engineering, from site investigation for engineering design to installation of foundation solutions. However, modelling large deformation soil-structure interaction is challenging due to numerous interacting non-linearities, specifically: (i) non-linear history dependent soil behaviour, (ii) large deformation mechanics and (iii) contact and friction. Conventional modelling approaches, such as the finite element method, can struggle to model these problems due to the large distortional deformations creating issues such as mesh distortion, which can reduce the accuracy of the simulation or even result in numerical failure. Since 2014 researchers in the Computational Mechanics Node lead by Prof. Augarde and Coombs have developed the Material Point Method such that it is now a viable approach to solve important engineering problems involving large deformation soil-structure interaction. This development has been supported by several offshore geotechnics-focused, UKRI funded research projects on: Offshore Cable Burial: How deep is deep enough? (EP/W000970/1), Screw piles for wind energy foundation system (EP/N006054/1) and Seabed ploughing: modelling for infrastructure installation (EP/M000397/1).  We are committed to making the method as accessible as possible, including the release of the AMPLE (A Material Point Learning Environment) open-source code (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.advengsoft.2019.102748). We are also looking for new applications of the modelling framework via solving industry-relevant problems and fundamental development of the technique through PhD/MScR research projects.