Large displacement FEM modelling of the cone penetration test (CPT) in normally consolidated sand

A new finite element model based on a large strain formulation has been developed to study cone penetration in normally consolidated sand. An auto-adaptive remeshing technique was utilized for handling the very large distortion of sand surrounding the cone tip. A frictional contact interface utilizing Mohr–Coulomb's theory was chosen to represent interactions between the surface of the cone and sand. To model the sand behaviour, the non-associated Drucker–Prager constitutive model was selected. ABAQUS, a commercial finite element software package, was used to implement the model. The explicit solution algorithm was chosen due to its effectiveness for complicated contact problems. Analysis results proved that the model successfully captured the cone penetration behavior in sand. In addition, a chart to predict internal friction angles based on cone tip resistance for different vertical effective stresses was provided. This paper also shows a typical distribution of sleeve resistance, tip resistance—penetration relationship, and typical contours of vertical, horizontal, and shear stresses in normally consolidated sand. Finally, a non-uniform resistance was found along the length of the friction sleeve. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/34878/1/287_ftp.pd

Thermal-elastic stresses and the criticality of the continental crust

Heating or cooling can lead to high stresses in rocks due to the different thermal-elastic properties of minerals. In the upper 4 km of the crust, such internal stresses might cause fracturing. Yet it is unclear if thermal elasticity contributes significantly to critical stresses and failure deeper in Earth's continental crust, where ductile creep causes stress relaxation. We combined a heating experiment conducted in a Synchrotron microtomograph (Advanced Photon Source, USA) with numerical simulations to calculate the grain-scale stress field in granite generated by slow burial. We find that deviatoric stresses >100 MPa can be stored during burial, with relaxation times from 100's to 1000's ka, even in the ductile crust. Hence, grain-scale thermal-elastic stresses may serve as nuclei for instabilities, thus rendering the continental crust close to criticality