The application of a meshless method to consolidation analysis of saturated soils with anisotropic damage

This paper explores the applicability of a novel meshless method, namely the radial point interpolation method (RPIM), to the numerical simulation of consolidation of saturated soils with anisotropic damage. Firstly, an elastic constitutive relationship for the anisotropically damaged soil is derived. The RPIM is subsequently presented. Then, the damage constitutive equation is implemented into the RPIM code, in which the displacement and excess pore water pressure are spatially approximated by the same shape functions and the time domain is discretized by fully implicit integration scheme. At last, the effect of anisotropic damage on soil consolidation process is explored numerically. The results reveal that the established numerical scheme incorporating the constitutive model with anisotropic damage and the RPIM meshless method is very effective in simulating the soil–water coupling problem with good accuracy. Besides, the effects of the magnitude and direction of anisotropic damage are found to exert significant influences on the evolution of settlement and the excess pore water pressure.