An investigation of stress inaccuracies and proposed solution in the material point method

Journal Article (2019)
Author(s)

José Leόn González Acosta (TU Delft - Civil Engineering & Geosciences)

Philip J. Vardon (TU Delft - Civil Engineering & Geosciences)

Guido Remmerswaal (TU Delft - Civil Engineering & Geosciences)

Michael A. Hicks (TU Delft - Civil Engineering & Geosciences)

Research Group
Geo-engineering
DOI related publication
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00466-019-01783-3 Final published version
More Info
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Publication Year
2019
Language
English
Research Group
Geo-engineering
Journal title
Computational Mechanics
Issue number
2
Volume number
65 (2020)
Pages (from-to)
555-581
Downloads counter
301
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Abstract

Stress inaccuracies (oscillations) are one of the main problems in the material point method (MPM), especially when advanced constitutive models are used. The origins of such oscillations are a combination of poor force and stiffness integration, stress recovery inaccuracies, and cell crossing problems. These are caused mainly by the use of shape function gradients and the use of material points for integration in MPM.The most common techniques developed to reduce stress oscillations consider adapting the shape function gradients so that they are continuous at the nodes. These techniques improve MPM, but problems remain, particularly in two and three dimensional cases. In this paper, the stress inaccuracies are investigated in detail, with particular reference to an implicit time integration scheme. Three modifications to MPM are implemented, and together these are able to remove almost all of the observed oscillations.