Modeling the pressuremeter test by FEMxDEM approach

In geotechnical engineering, site investigation and soil properties determination are important tasks. For this purpose, several approaches have been developed so far. Among them, pressuremeter is one of the most essential testing processes. This test is useful and widely applied for the estimation of soil and weak rock characteristics. Beside onsite and/or laboratory experiment works, numerical attempts have been also developed to correctly simulate and predict the behavior of pressuremeter test made of granular soil. This is usually done by using Finite Element Method (FEM) with (non-)associated plastic constitutive law or pure Discrete Element Method (DEM). However, both methods have some drawbacks. First, describing the discrete nature of granular soil is not simple even with advance constitutive law. Second, it seems a great challenge for DEM when accounting for a large number of real-grain size in a single simulation. To overcome these limitations, in this paper, we use a multi-scale modeling, intimately combine FEM and DEM. to capture the mechanical behavior of granular soil during pressuremeter test. The simulation consists of macro discretization by Finite Element Method and a Discrete Element Method (DEM)-based constitutive model. To define this new constitutive model, a volume element composed of 2D-circular particles is used. The VE is then compressed to isotropic stress condition before performing the pressuremeter. Thanks to the multi-scale results, macro-micro behaviors have been analyzed, providing the micromechanics insight into macroscopic behavior of process. The obtained results revealed that several microscopic parameters controlled, and are the origin of granular soil behavior

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