Application of Frictional Contact in Geotechnical Engineering
Publication: International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 7, Issue 3
Abstract
Soil-structure interaction is traditionally simplified to prescribed boundary conditions or modeled by joint elements. Both of these approaches are limited to small and continuous relative displacements at the interface. The use of contact constraints opens up a fresh range of possibilities for geotechnical analysis, especially for cases involving large interfacial deformation. This paper demonstrates the application of computational contact mechanics in geotechnical engineering. It first outlines a general description of kinematic constraints for frictional contact and the associated numerical algorithms. A number of classical geotechnical problems are then analyzed using finite-element contact methods. These problems include a strip footing under eccentric and inclined loads and a cone penetration test. It is shown that the finite-element method with frictional contact is indeed very useful in geotechnical analysis, and can provide solutions to problems that are otherwise very difficult to analyze.
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Published In
International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 7 • Issue 3 • May 2007
Pages: 176 - 185
Copyright
© 2007 ASCE.
History
Received: May 26, 2005
Accepted: Sep 12, 2006
Published online: May 1, 2007
Published in print: May 2007
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