A remedy to mitigate tensile instability in SPH for simulating large deformation and failure of geomaterials

TL;DR

This paper introduces an SPH framework with an adaptive B-spline kernel and pressure zone approach to effectively mitigate tensile instability in large deformation simulations of geomaterials, improving accuracy in landslide modeling.

Contribution

It presents a novel combination of adaptive B-spline kernels and pressure zones within SPH to address tensile instability in large deformation geomechanical simulations.

Findings

Successful removal of tensile instability and stress noise.

Validation against FEM with soil drop problem.

Effective simulation of slope failure in cohesive soils.

Abstract

Large deformation analysis in geomechanics plays an important role in understanding the nature of post-failure flows and hazards associated with landslides under different natural calamities. In this study, a SPH framework is proposed for large deformation and failure analysis of geomaterials. An adaptive B-spline kernel function in combination with a pressure zone approach is proposed to counteract the numerical issues associated with tensile instability. The proposed algorithm is validated using a soil cylinder drop problem, and the results are compared with FEM. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in the successful removal of tensile instability and stress noise is demonstrated using the well-studied slope failure simulation of a cohesive soil vertical cut.