Stabilized semi‐Implicit material point method for hydro‐mechanical coupled large deformation soil‐structure interaction analyses
File(s)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Hydro-mechanical coupled analysis of geotechnical problems generally poses stability challenges, particularly for soil-structure interaction problems involving large deformations. This study presents a stabilized semi-implicit MPM (Material Point Method) treatment based on the incremental fractional step approach to suppress the arbitrary and unphysical pressure oscillations commonly encountered in explicit MPM formulations. The proposed treatment alleviates the restrictive constraints on time increment durations imposed by geomaterial permeability. A frictional contact algorithm incorporating a penalty function is also shown to effectively reduce the formation of spurious gaps and numerical fluctuations over soil-structure contact areas. The stability of the semi-implicit MPM treatment is enhanced by introducing artificial compressibility into the pressure Poisson equation, integrating the APIC (Affine Particle-in-Cell) scheme for particle-grid information transfer, as well as adopting the B-bar approach to mitigate volumetric locking. Additionally, an axisymmetric formulation is developed to enable more efficient modeling of selected classical geotechnical problems. The effectiveness and robustness of the proposed framework are demonstrated against a series of benchmark test cases, including coupled, axisymmetric, dynamic, large deformation and soil-structure interaction simulations, considering the Modified Cam-clay constitutive model.
Date Issued
2026-06-25
Date Acceptance
2026-03-25
Citation
International Journal for Numerical and Analytical Methods in Geomechanics, 2026, 50 (9), pp.3935-3954
ISSN
0363-9061
Publisher
Wiley
Start Page
3935
End Page
3954
Journal / Book Title
International Journal for Numerical and Analytical Methods in Geomechanics
Volume
50
Issue
9
Copyright Statement
Copyright © 2026 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is the author’s accepted manuscript made available under a CC-BY licence in accordance with Imperial’s Research Publications Open Access policy (www.imperial.ac.uk/oa-policy)
License URL
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2026-04-06