Coupled solid-fluid FE-analysis of an embankment dam

Abstract

A coupled solid-fluid FE-model for partially saturated soils, characterized by modeling the soil as a three-phase material consisting of a deformable soil skeleton and the fluid phases water and air, is reviewed briefly. As a constitutive model for the soil skeleton, the well-known Barcelona Basic model (BBM) is employed, which is formulated in terms of net stress and matric suction. For the BBM, a computationally efficient return mapping algorithm is proposed, which only requires the solution of a scalar nonlinear equation at the integration point level. The coupled FE-model is applied to the coupled transient numerical simulation of the water flow and the deformations and stresses in an embankment dam.

Keywords

multi-phase model / unsaturated soil model / Barcelona Basic model (BBM) / return mapping algorithm / embankment dam

References

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Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg