Development and experimental validation of an arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) method for soil mechanics

Large deformation problems in soil mechanics and geotechnical engineering can hardly be addressed by the traditional Lagrangian finite element method because the material and mesh motions coincide. This paper presents an arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) method in which the computational mesh is regarded as an independent reference domain to keep mesh quality acceptable throughout the calculation. The relative velocity between the material and the mesh introduces additional complexity which is treated by a Lagrange-plus-remap strategy in conjunction with efficient algorithms. Because thorough validation plays a crucial role, experimental model testing concerned with penetration into sand have been carried out and back-analyzed by using the ALE method.