Cone penetration tests (CPTs) in bi-phase soils: A material point approach with rigid body interaction

Bird, Robert; Pretti, Giuliano; Coombs, William M; Augarde, Charles E; Sharif, Yaseen; Brown, Michael; Carter, Gareth; Johnson, Kirstin

Abstract

Cone Penetration Tests (CPTs) can be used to determine in-situ material properties and represent a practical choice for site investigation offshore, especially for linear infrastructure, such as Offshore Wind export cables. Information gained from CPTs is key for predicting soil-structure interaction behaviour , for example when predicting the tow forces involved in seabed ploughing [1], as a CPT provides a useful analogue to the process. The numerical modelling of CPTs is challenging due to the significant distortion in soil displaced by the penetrating cone. This means that solving this sort of problem using finite elements, although not impossible, is numerically tiresome in terms of remeshing and mapping of state variables [2]. Here the Material Point Method (MPM) is adopted to model saturated bi-phase materials using the u − p formulation, which interacts with a rigid body through a normal penalty contact and Coulomb stick-slip friction. Since the penetration velocity is relatively slow with respect to the total time, the method is assumed pseudo-static and solved implicitly for computational efficiency.

Citation

Bird, R., Pretti, G., Coombs, W. M., Augarde, C. E., Sharif, Y., Brown, M., …Johnson, K. (2023, April). Cone penetration tests (CPTs) in bi-phase soils: A material point approach with rigid body interaction. Paper presented at UK Association for Computational Mechanics 2023 (UKACM 2023), University of Warwick, UK

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: UK Association for Computational Mechanics 2023 (UKACM 2023)
• Start Date: Apr 19, 2023
• End Date: Apr 21, 2023
• Deposit Date: Sep 18, 2023
• Keywords: Material Point Method; Cone Penetration Test; contact; bi-phase; rigid body
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1740753
• Publisher URL: https://sites.google.com/view/ukacm2023conference