TITLE:
Towards a Micromechanical Understanding of Landslides—Aiming at a Combination of Finite and Discrete Elements with Minimal Number of Degrees of Freedom
AUTHORS:
Jan Mueller, Akira Kyotani, Hans-Georg Matuttis
KEYWORDS:
Finite Element Method, Discrete Element Method, Multi-Phase Flow
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Applied Mathematics and Physics,
Vol.8 No.9,
September
14,
2020
ABSTRACT: In this paper, we propose a combination of discrete elements for the soil and finite elements for the fluid flow field inside the pore space to simulate the triggering of landslides. We give the details for the implementation of third order finite elements (“P2 with bubble”) together with polygonal discrete elements, which allows the formulation with a minimal number of degrees of freedom to save computer time and memory. We verify the implementation with several standard problems from computational fluid dynamics, as well as the decay of a granular step in a fluid as test case for complex flow.