ILS-MPM: An implicit level-set-based material point method for frictional particulate contact mechanics of deformable particles

Abstract

Finite element simulations of frictional multi-body contact problems via conformal meshes can be challenging and computationally demanding. To render geometrical features, unstructured meshes are often generated via a trial-and-error procedure. This treatment also unavoidably increases the degrees of freedom and makes the construction of slave/master pairs cumbersome. In this work, we introduce an implicit material point method designed to bypass meshing of bodies by employing level set functions to represent boundaries at structured grids. This implicit function representation provides an elegant mean to link an unbiased intermediate reference surface with the true boundaries by closest point projection as shown in Leichner et al. (2019). We then enforce the contact constraints by a penalty method where the Coulomb friction law is implemented such that a return mapping algorithm can be used to provide constitutive updates for both the stick and slip states. To evolve the geometry of the contacts properly, the Hamilton–Jacobi equation is solved incrementally such that the level set and material points are both updated according to the deformation field. To improve the accuracy and regularity of the numerical integration of the material point method, a moving least square method is used to project numerical values of the material points back to the standard locations for Gaussian-Legendre quadrature. Several benchmarks are used to verify the proposed model. Comparisons with discrete element simulations are made to analyze the importance of stress fields on predicting the macroscopic responses of granular assemblies.