ARBITRARY LAGRANGIAN-EULERIAN FINITE ELEMENT FORMULATION FOR GEOTECHNICAL CONSTRUCTION PROCESSES *

Abstract

The paper presents a numerical approach to the simulation of geotechnical construction processes involving large local deformation of sandy soil. In contrast to standard Lagrangian and Eulerian formulations of the nite element methods, the chosen Simple Arbitrary Lagrangian- Eulerian (SALE) formulation succeeds in avoiding entanglement of the nite element mesh without disclaiming free surfaces and moving bound- aries, by introducing a reference domain uncoupled with the material and the spatial conguration. In order to produce realistic results, the incor- poration of an advanced path- and state-dependent constitutive equation for sand is necessary. Furthermore, the treatment of the convective terms, which enter the governing equations, also plays a crucial role. First re- sults of numerical examples highlight the facilities of the SALE framework compared to the classical Lagrangian solution.