Simulation of shear bands with soft particle code (SPARC) and FE (Q1706733)

This article studies from a numerical point of view how shear bands develop, their thickness and orientation. A biaxial test is employed for homogeneous/ inhomogeneous localized deformation and two numerical approaches for solving problems of continuum mechanics are presented and compared, namely the meshless ``Soft PARticle Code'' method and the mesh based Finite Element method. The former is a straightforward collocation numerical method based on strong formulation, in which a first order polynomial basis is adopted for the evaluation of spatial derivatives in partial differential equations. The latter uses the weak formulation to solve the underlying differential equation. The authors adopt the novel nonlinear constitutive model ``barodesy for clay''. Results of simulations with SPARC and FE with implemented imperfection and the same number of particles or nodes, have shown that the inclination and shape of shear band from both methods is comparable and almost similar.