FINITE ELEMENT SIMULATION BASED ON SOIL MESOSTRUCTURES EXTRACTED FROM DIGITAL IMAGE

摘要

This paper presents a finite element method based on digital image processing for the two-dimensional mechanical analysis of soil stabilized by cement mortar by actually taking into account the soil inhomogeneities and mesostructures. Digital image techniques are used to acquire the inhomogeneous distributions of soil particles and voids in digital format. Then, the digital image is transferred as a vectorization image including the geometric structure and sub-regions of particles and voids. Next, the vectorization image is used as inputs for finite element mesh generations using automatic mesh generation techniques. Lastly, the finite element method is employed to carry out the computation and analysis of soil mechanical problems under unlimited compression test by taking into account the actual internal inhomogeneity of the soil. The numerical results show that the actual distributions of the internal stress and displacement are different from the analysis results based on the continuum mechanics theory, and the soil mesostructures have significant effects on the compaction stress and displacement distribution along the loading.