Session

DescriptionNumerical simulation has become a necessary tool in the field of geotechnical engineering. As the common material involved, geomaterial is always with great discontinuity, heterogeneity, and anisotropy. To describe the mechanical behavior of geomaterial, various computational methods have been developed. As an important branch, discontinuous numerical methods are designed using the bottom-to-top strategy, in which the computational model is divided into a group of discrete elements to reproduce the response of its physical counterpart. Compared to continuous methods, such as the finite element method (FEM), the discontinuous numerical method is regarded as superior in representing characteristics of geomaterial and obtaining closer results to those of laboratory testing. However, they are always handicapped to be further applied into the practical case in geotechnical engineering due to the extra high computational requirements, e.g., over millions if not billions of numerical elements are generally required for discontinuous numerical model of a large scale slope or underground cavern. This mini-symposium targets presenting new parallel computing algorithms of discontinuous numerical methods for geotechnical engineering, including but not limited to new developed computing methods such as the discontinuous deformation analysis, the discrete element model and the four-dimensional lattice spring model.