3D thermo-hydro-mechanical coupled discrete beam lattice model of saturated poro-plastic medium

Abstract

In this paper, we present a 3D thermo-hydro-mechanical coupled discrete beam lattice model of structure built of the nonisothermal saturated poro-plastic medium subjected to mechanical loads and nonstationary heat transfer conditions. The proposed model is based on Voronoi cell representation of the domain with cohesive links represented as inelastic Timoshenko beam finite elements enhanced with additional kinematics in terms of embedded strong discontinuities in axial and both transverse directions. The enhanced Timoshenko beam finite element is capable of modeling crack formation in mode I, mode II and mode III. Mode I relates to crack opening, mode II relates to in-plane crack sliding, and mode III relates to the out-of-plane shear sliding. The pore fluid flow and heat flow in the proposed model are governed by Darcy\'s law and Fourier\'s law for heat conduction, respectively. The pore pressure field and temperature field are approximated with linear tetrahedral finite elements. By exploiting nodal point quadrature rule for numerical integration on tetrahedral finite elements and duality property between Voronoi diagram and Delaunay tetrahedralization, the numerical implementation of the coupling results with additional pore pressure and temperature degrees of freedom placed at each node of a Timoshenko beam finite element. The results of several numerical simulations are presented and discussed.