Numerical Analysis of Geomaterials within Theory of Porous Media

It is widely accepted that the mechanical behavior of saturated geomaterials is largely governed by the interaction of the solid skeleton with the fluids present in the pore structure. This interaction is particularly strong in quasi-static and dynamic problems and may lead to the catastrophic loss of strength known as liquefaction, which frequently occurs under earthquake loading. In this work, numerical simulations of saturated granular deposits under transient loads are presented to illustrate the performance of a u-p-U finite-element method formulation and the versatility of the numerical implementation. Closed-form solutions based on both a Biot formulation and modern theories of mixtures are compared with numerical results. In addition, centrifuge experimental results are correlated with numerical simulations. A companion paper presents the details of the theoretical formulation and the numerical implementation within the finite-element method.