Coupled CFD-MPM simulation of soil-fluid interaction in geotechnics

Abstract

Material Point Method (MPM) can be used to simulate large deformations in geotechnics such as debris flows or landslides [1]. However, simulating the submarine debris flows using MPM is quite challenging as it involves complex interactions between debris flow (soil) and seawater (fluid) such as turbulence or hydroplaning mechanisms. This paper presents a coupled Computational Fluid Dynamics and MPM (CFD-MPM) approach [2] to simulate the behavior of soil-fluid interaction for applications in geotechnical engineering. MPM is employed to model the porous media system, while the CFD is used to simulate the fluid flow by solving the Navier–Stokes equations. The soil-fluid interaction is considered by drag forces and buoyancy forces in the multi-phase governing equations. We implemented the formulations in the Uintah computational framework. Numerical simulations are performed and compared with the experiment to highlight the capability of the coupled CFD-MPM model. REFERENCES [1] Q. A. Tran and W. Sołowski, “Generalized Interpolation Material Point Method modelling of large deformation problems including strain-rate effects – Application to penetration and progressive failure problems,” Computers and Geotechnics, vol. 106, pp. 249-265, 2019. [2] J. E. Guilkey, T. Harman and B. Banerjee, “An Eulerian-Lagrangian approach for simulating explosions of energetic devices,” Computers & Structures, vol. 85, no. 11-14, pp. 660-674, 2007.