Effects of the MPM discretisations on soil-structure problems

Abstract

Material point method (MPM) is a mesh based particle method which is suitable to simulate applications with large deformations. MPM adopts two discretisations, one is the space discretisation where the equation of motion is solved, and the other is the material discretisation where the continuum is replaced by material points or particles. Particles are allowed to move through the background computational mesh,which allows MPM to simulate large displacements and deformations of the material[9].The effect of the spatial discretisationon the simulation results have been studied by otherse.g. [1]considering a specific applicationlike bending of a cantilevered beam. More generally, the sensitivity of the MPM solution to the two discretisations specially when dealing with bench mark problems in the field of geotechnical engineering has not been considered so far,althoughthe methodis applied widelyin this area e.g. [2,13].In this paper, the well-known problemin the field of geotechnical engineering isanalyzed using MPM. In the case of available reference solutions the results are then evaluated. The effects of the two MPM discretisations on the quality of the final results have been investigated where some concluding remarks are presented.