Mine clearing (or military breaching) consists in ploughing the superficial layer of the soil with a multi-tine blade located in front of a pusher vehicle: the tine destructure the soil and heave it in front of the blade which pushes it aside, with the mines inside. The aim of the present study is to perform the numerical simulation by the 3D finite element method of the highly non-linear problem of soil ploughing modeling. The numerical tool chosen for this purpose is the implicit finite element code Forge3® (devoted to Metal Forming Processes) which, thanks to its automatic re-meshing routine, is able to model large deformation. We have implemented in Forge3® two hypo-elastic-plastic models: an incompressible one for saturated fine soils, purely cohesive, and a compressible one based on the critical state concept for frictional or frictional-cohesive materials. These worksoftening material models are time-integrated by a generalized radial return technique within an implicit formulation. We show that compressibility yields a non-symmetric stiffness matrix, and that the symmetrization of the system is not robust enough, so that the non-symmetric solver Bi-CGSTAB has been implemented after comparative tests. The implemented models were validated on triaxial tests. For softening models, oscillations occurred in the stress/strain curves after the stress peak. These numerical difficulties were overcome using linearisation and regularisation techniques. As a second step, we performed numerical simulations for different kinds of tools : a single tine, a single tine + a slab of a blade, several tines and several tines + a blade. Tool displacements were simulated until a steady state was reached. This takes displacements all the larger as the tool system is wider, leading to intensive computation. Geometric parameters such as tine rake angle or system stem angle clearly influence the complex material flow patterns, in a way similar to experimental observations. Material model parameters shown dominant are those linked with the concept of critical state, i.e. corresponding to the large deformation range. Finally the global model was validated from a qualitative point of view, in terms of flow pattern and force distribution for multi-tine tools. Quantitative comparison with experiments must still be refined, returning to the constitutive model and its implementation.
展开▼
