Application of smoothed Finite element method in coupled hydro-mechanical analyses

Smoothed finite element method (SFEM) was introduced by application of the stabilized conforming nodal integration in the conventional finite element method. In this method, integration is performed on “smoothing domains” rather than elements. Smoothing domains are created based on cells, nodes or edges for two dimensional problems. Based on the smoothing domain creation method, different types of SFEM are developed that have different properties. It has been shown that these methods are insensitive to mesh distortion and are generally more computationally efficient than mesh-free and finite element methods for the same accuracy level. Because of their interesting features, they have been used to solve different problems. This paper investigates the performance of these methods in coupled hydro-mechanical (consolidation) analysis, by solution of some problems using a developed SFEM/FEM code. Biot’s consolidation theory is reviewed, and after introduction of the idea and formulation of SFEMs, discretized form of equations is given. Requirements for creation of stable coupled hydro-mechanical models are discussed and based on them, two methods for creation of stable SFEM models are introduced. To investigate the effectiveness of the methods, a number of examples are solved and results are compared with the finite element and analytical ones.