Geotechnical stability analysis considering strain softening using micro-polar continuum finite element method

Geotechnical stability analyses based on classical continuum may lead to remarkable underestimations on geotechnical safety.To attain better estimations on geotechnical stability,the micro-polar continuum is employed so that its internal characteristic length(lc)can be utilized to model the shear band width.Based on two soil slope examples,the role of internal characteristic length in modeling the shear band width of geomaterial is investigated by the second-order cone programming optimized micro-polar continuum finite element method.It is recognized that the underestimation on factor of safety(FOS)calculated from the classical continuum tends to be more pronounced with the increase of lc.When the micro-polar continuum is applied,the shear band dominated by lc is almost kept unaffected as long as the adopted meshes are fine enough,but it does not generally present a slip surface like in the cases from the classical continuum,indicating that the micro-polar continuum is capable of capturing the non-local geotechnical failure characteristic.Due to the coupling effects of lc and strain softening,softening behavior of geomaterial tends to be postponed.Additionally,the bearing capacity of a geotechnical system may be significantly underestimated,if the effects of lc are not modeled or considered in numerical analyses.

Semi-analytic solution of Eringen's two-phase local/nonlocal model for Euler-Bernoulli beam with axial force

Eringen’s two-phase local/nonlocal model is applied to an Euler-Bernoulli nanobeam considering the bending-induced axial force, where the contribution of the axial force to bending moment is calculated on the deformed state. Basic equations for the corresponding one-dimensional beam problem are obtained by degenerating from the three-dimensional nonlocal elastic equations. Semi-analytic solutions are then presented for a clamped-clamped beam subject to a concentrated force and a uniformly distributed load, respectively. Except for the traditional essential boundary conditions and those required to be satisfied by transferring an integral equation to its equivalent differential form, additional boundary conditions are needed and should be chosen with great caution, since numerical results reveal that non-unique solutions might exist for a nonlinear problem if inappropriate boundary conditions are used. The validity of the solutions is examined by plotting both sides of the original integro-differential governing equation of deflection and studying the error between both sides. Besides, an increase in the internal characteristic length would cause an increase in the deflection and axial force of the beam.