Elasto-Plastic Numerical Analysis on Elliptic Cavity Expansion under Uniform Pressure

Abstract

Analysis of the expansion of cylindrical and spherical cavities in soil and rock provides a versatile and accurate geomechanics approach for study of important problems in geotechnical engineering. As the method getting more important, the analysis of non-circular shape cavity is becoming significance. The paper has investigated the cavity wall shape varying characteristic and elasto-plastic distribution of stress of elliptic shape cavity under internal uniform pressure during the expansion period through ABAQUS FEM numerical. It pointed that the elliptic cavity wall will tend to circle shape as the internal uniform pressure increasing. It also gain that the elasto-plastic distribution around the elliptic cavity is bigger than spherical cavity’s and smaller than spherical cavity’s when material and pressure are same . The stress characters and the cavity wall transfiguration result is useful for estimate non-circular shape cavity expansion.