Recent progress in predicting the onset and post-failure of geomaterials

Dr Ha Bui

Geotechnical designs often rely on traditional analytical and computational approaches which are limited to small deformation problems. While these methods of analysis provide important guidance, and have been used for the safe design of many geotechnical structures, they are unable to provide information on the failure of such structures under extreme weather or operational conditions or the risk associated with these failure modes. To foresee and assess such risks, it is important for geotechnical engineers to be equipped with knowledge and skills in advanced computational methods and material constitutive models capable of describing the failure of geomaterials. In this talk, Ha will discuss recent developments in the field of computational geomechanics to predict the onset and post-failure of geomaterials with reference to geomechanics problems relating to slope stability, debris flows, strain localisation/localised failure, soil desiccation, amongst other examples. The work his research team has done with particular focuses on the scaling issues and the application of an emerging Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method to geomechanics is discussed. The presentation is a modified version of his keynote presentation at the International Material Point Method (MPM) conference held at Cambridge University in 2019.

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