Dynamic Loading of Partially-Saturated Soil: an investigation in the framework of numerical mechanics of strongly coupled problems

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Wolfgang Ehlers
• Subject Area: Applied Mechanics, Statics and Dynamics ; Geotechnics, Hydraulic Engineering
• Term: from 2009 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 76838227

Both complicated foundations as well as foundation techniques necessary when building in an existing context (such as pile driving or vibrating) have to be based on a detailed survey of the mutual interactions of the emerging construction and the “overall system subsoil”. Considering these features, static as well as dynamic loadings conditions have to be taken into account. These loadings act on the subsoil and can cause large deformations. Withstanding these loads takes place by the mutual interaction of the various components of the subsoil consisting of a solid skeleton, the soil, and the pore fluids, pore water and pore gas. When the subsoil is loaded by external forces, a time-sensitive, elasto-plastic or elasto-viscoplastic deformation process is initialised resulting in a coupled quasi-static or dynamic deformation-flow problem of the overall subsoil. Within this sub-project, dry, partially saturated and fully saturated soils are considered and numerically treated on the basis of a strongly coupled system of partial-differential equations resulting from the mass and momentum balances of the components. The overall model is based on the Theory of Porous Media and includes small and finite, elasto-plastic deformations of the subsoil. The numerical investigations are carried out by the Finite-Element Method in combination with implicit and explicit time-integration procedures suitable for dynamic problems.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 1136: Simulation of Geotechnical Construction Processes with Holistic Consideration of Constitutive Lows in Soils
• Participating Person: Professor Dr.-Ing. Bernd Markert