Modelling of Swelling Phenomena in Charged Hydrated Porous Media

Biological tissues like articular cartilage and geomaterials like clay have a multicomponent microstructure. The charged solid is saturated by a viscous fluid, which itself is composed of several components: the liquid solvent and the dissolved ions, namely, water, anions and cations. These charged multiphase materials exhibit a swelling behaviour under varying chemical conditions. The model describing such materials combines electrochemical and mechanical effects like osmosis and electrostatics within a macroscopic formulation. Starting from the Theory of Porous Media (TPM), a four component model is presented, wherein all constituents are materially incompressible and mass exchanges are excluded. This isothermal model leads to a set of equations which consists of three primary variables: the solid displacement u _S, the pore‐pressure p and the molar ion concentration c_m, since the ion concentrations always depend on each other because of the electroneutrality condition. For the numerical treatment, the weak formulations of governing equations are implemented in the FE tool PANDAS, wherein Taylor‐Hood elements are used for the spatial discretization. Finally, a simulation of a 3‐d swelling experiment is shown. (© 2004 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Localization Phenomena in Liquid-Saturatedand Empty Porous Solids

Localization phenomena occur as a result of local concentrations of plastic deformations in small bands of finite width (shear bands). Porous materials, as, for instance, soil, rock, concrete and sinter materials as well as polymeric and metallic foams exhibit a strong tendency towards shear banding caused by plastic dilatation in the brittle deformation range. This kind of behaviour is of great practical importance in engineering design, for example in the study and computation of failure mechanisms in soil mechanics (base failure, slope failure, etc.). From the mathematical point of view, the computation of localization phenomena, for example within the framework of the finite element method (FEM), yields an ill-posed problem, since each mesh refinement leads to smaller shear bands until one obtains (ideally) a singular surface. Following this, regularization mechanisms should be introduced to obtain reliable and robust results.In the present article, two natural regularization mechanisms for liquid-saturated and empty granular porous materials are discussed. These mechanisms are (1) the inclusion of additional independent degrees of freedom in the sense of the Cosserat brothers for the granular porous solid and (2) the inclusion of pore-fluid viscosity in the saturated case.     

Comparison of a biphasic and a multicomponent model describing viscoelastic swelling phenomena

Biological soft tissues like articular cartilage and their artificial replacement hydrogel have a multicomponent microstructure, consisting of a charged viscoelastic solid matrix saturated by a fluid, which is composed of the liquid solvent and the dissolved anions and cations. Such charged multiphasic materials exhibit a swelling behaviour under varying chemical conditions. These materials are best described by a macroscopic approach like the Theory of Porous Media (TPM). Starting from this point, a standard two-phase model is extended by dividing the fluid into the above mentioned components. Therein, the chemical relations describing the behaviour of the ions and their interaction with the other mixture constituents are incorporated. The resulting model covers mechanical as well as osmotic and electrostatic effects. For numerical and simplicity reasons, it is possible to describe the swelling phenomena by a simplified biphasic model, where the ions as a third degree of freedom and their time-dependent diffusion are neglected. Furthermore, the viscoelastic solid matrix can be replaced by an elastic material. Note that using the multicomponent model generally results in numerical problems, since the boundary conditions depend on the internal fixed charge density. It is shown that this problem can be solved by including the boundary conditions into the weak formulation. Finally, to compare the different behaviour of the above mentioned models by means of an swelling example, they are implemented into the FE tool PANDAS using stable Taylor-Hood elements for the spatial discretization. (© 2005 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Galerkin‐type space‐time finite elements for volumetrically coupled problems

The study focuses on error estimation techniques for a coupled problem with two constituents based on the Theory of Porous Media. After developing space‐time finite elements for this mixed problem, we extend the numerical scheme to a coupled space‐time adaptive strategy. Therefore, an adjoint or dual problem is formulated and discussed, which is solved lateron numerically. One advantage of the presented technique is the high flexibility of the error indicator with respect to the error measure.     

A single-surface yield function for geomaterials

Summary The article outlines a seven-parametric yield function for geomaterials such as soils and rocks. Proceeding from a geometric representation in the principal stress space, the yield surface exhibits a closed shape, thus reflecting the sensitivity of the plastic response of this type of media to hydrostatic stresses. The yield function is able to describe the effects of primary yielding, as well as of isotropic and kinematic hardening. In addition the failure envelope contains an open cone when the number of material parameters is reduced from seven to five.Dedicated to F. G. Kollmann on the occasion of his 60th birthday