A FIC-based stabilized mixed finite element method with equal order interpolation for solid–pore fluid interaction problems

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: [de-Pouplana, I., and Oñate, E. (2017) A FIC-based stabilized mixed finite element method with equal order interpolation for solid–pore fluid interaction problems. Int. J. Numer. Anal. Meth. Geomech., 41: 110–134. doi: 10.1002/nag.2550], which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/nag.2550/abstract. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving."A new mixed displacement-pressure element for solving solid–pore fluid interaction problems is presented. In the resulting coupled system of equations, the balance of momentum equation remains unaltered, while the mass balance equation for the pore fluid is stabilized with the inclusion of higher-order terms multiplied by arbitrary dimensions in space, following the finite calculus (FIC) procedure. The stabilized FIC-FEM formulation can be applied to any kind of interpolation for the displacements and the pressure, but in this work, we have used linear elements of equal order interpolation for both set of unknowns. Examples in 2D and 3D are presented to illustrate the accuracy of the stabilized formulation for solid–pore fluid interaction problems.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Phase field modeling of partially saturated deformable porous media

A poromechanical model of partially saturated deformable porous media is proposed based on a phase field approach at modeling the behavior of the mixture of liquid water and wet air, which saturates the pore space, the phase field being the saturation (ratio). While the standard retention curve is expected still to provide the intrinsic retention properties of the porous skeleton, depending on the porous texture, an enhanced description of surface tension between the wetting (liquid water) and the non-wetting (wet air) fluid, occupying the pore space, is stated considering a regularization of the phase field model based on an additional contribution to the overall free energy depending on the saturation gradient. The aim is to provide a more refined description of surface tension interactions. An enhanced constitutive relation for the capillary pressure is established together with a suitable generalization of Darcy's law, in which the gradient of the capillary pressure is replaced by the gradient of the so-called generalized chemical potential, which also accounts for the \lq\lq force\rq\rq\, associated to the local free energy of the phase field model. A micro-scale heuristic interpretation of the novel constitutive law of capillary pressure is proposed, in order to compare the envisaged model with that one endowed with the concept of average interfacial area. The considered poromechanical model is formulated within the framework of strain gradient theory in order to account for possible effects, at laboratory scale, of the micro-scale hydro-mechanical couplings between highly-localized flows (fingering) and localized deformations of the skeleton (fracturing)