Numerical modelling of complex geomechanical problems

Abstract

La tesis se centra en el desarrollo de técnicas numéricas específicas para la resolución de problemas de mecánica de sólidos, tomando como referencia aquellos que involucran geomateriales (suelos, rocas, materiales granulares,...). Concretamente, se tratan los siguientes puntos: 1) formulaciones Arbitrariamente Lagrangianas Eulerianas (ALE) para problemas con grandes desplazamientos del contorno; 2) métodos de resolución para problemas no lineales en el campo de la mecánica de sólidos y 3) modelización del comportamiento mecánico de materiales granulares mediante leyes constitutivas elastoplásticas. <br/>Las principales aportaciones de la tesis son: el desarrollo de una formulación ALE para modelos hyperelastoplásticos y el cálculo de operadores tangentes para distintas leyes constitutivas y esquemas de integración temporal no triviales (uso de esquemas de derivación numérica, técnicas de subincrementación y modelos elastoplásticos con endurecimiento y/o reblandecimiento dependientes del trabajo plástico o la densidad). Se presentan diversas aplicaciones que muestran las principales características de los desarrollos presentados (análisis del ensayo del molinete para arcillas blandas, del ensayo triaxial para arenas, de la rotura bajo una cimentación, del proceso de estricción de una barra metálica circular y de un proceso de estampación en frío), dedicando una especial atención a los aspectos computacionales de la resolución de dichos problemas. Por último, se dedica un capítulo específico a la modelización y la simulación numérica de procesos de compactación fría de polvos metálicos y cerámicos.

Numerical modelling of problems involving geomaterials (i.e. soils, rocks, concrete and ceramics) has been an area of active research over the past few decades. This fact is probably due to three main causes: the increasing interest of predicting the material behaviour in practical engineering situations, the great change of computer capabilities and resources, and the growing interaction between computational mechanics, applied mathematics and different engineering fields (concrete, soil mechanics...). This thesis fits within this last multidisciplinary approach. Based on constitutive modelling and applied mathematics and using both languages the numerical simulation of some complex geomechanical problems has been studied.<br/><br/>The state of the art regarding experiments, constitutive modelling, and numerical simulations involving geomaterials is very extensive. The thesis focuses in three of the most important and actual ongoing research topics within this framework: 1) the treatment of large boundary displacements by means of Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) formulations; 2) the numerical solution of highly nonlinear systems of equations in solid mechanics; and 3) the constitutive modelling of the nonlinear mechanical behaviour of granular materials. The three topics have been analysed and different contributions for each one of them have been developed. Moreover, some of the new developments have been applied to the numerical modelling of cold compaction processes of powders. The process consists in transforming a loose powder into a compacted sample through a large volume reduction. This problem has been chosen as a reference application of the thesis because it involves large boundary displacements, finite deformations and highly nonlinear material behaviour. Therefore, it is a challenging geomechanical problem from a numerical modelling point of view.<br/><br/>The most relevant contributions of the thesis are the following: 1) with respect to the treatment of large boundary displacements: quasistatic and dynamic analyses of the vane test for soft materials using a fluid-based ALE formulation and different non-newtonian constitutive laws, and the development of a solid-based ALE formulation for finite strain hyperelastic-plastic models, with applications to isochoric and non-isochoric cases; 2) referent to the solution of nonlinear systems of equations in solid mechanics: the use of simple and robust numerical differentiation schemes for the computation of tangent operators, including examples with several non-trivial elastoplastic constitutive laws, and the development of consistent tangent operators for different substepping time-integration rules, with the application to an adaptive time-integration scheme; and 3) in the field of constitutive modelling of granular materials: the efficient numerical modelling of different problems involving elastoplastic models, including work hardening-softening models for small strain problems and density-dependent hyperelastic-plastic models in a large strain context, and robust and accurate simulations of several powder compaction processes, with detailed analysis of spatial density distributions and verification of the mass conservation principle.