Application of mesh-free smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) for study of soil behavior

Abstract

The finite element method (FEM), discrete element method (DEM), and Discontinuous deformation analysis (DDA) are among the standard numerical techniques applied in computational geo-mechanics. However, in some cases there no possibility for modelling by traditional finite analytical techniques or other mesh-based techniques. The solution presented in the current study as a completely Lagrangian and mesh-free technique is smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH). This method was basically applied for simulation of fluid flow by dividing the fluid into several particles. However, several researchers attempted to simulate soil-water interaction, landslides, and failure of soil by SPH method. In fact, this method is able to deal with behavior and interaction of different states of materials (liquid and solid) and multiphase soil models and their large deformations. Soil indicates different behaviors when interacting with water, structure, instrumentations, or different layers. Thus, study into these interactions using the mesh based grids has been facilitated by mesh-less SPH technique in this work. It has been revealed that the fast development, computational sophistication, and emerge of mesh-less particle modeling techniques offer solutions for problems which are not modeled by the traditional mesh-based techniques. Also it has been found that the smoothed particle hydrodynamic provides advanced techniques for simulation of soil materials as compared to the current traditional numerical methods. Besides, findings indicate that the advantages of applying this method are its high power, simplicity of concept, relative simplicity in combination of modern physics, and particularly its potential in study of large deformations and failures.