A dynamic large-deformation particle finite element method for geotechnical applications based on Abaqus

In this paper, the application of Abaqus-based particle finite element method (PFEM) is extended from static to dynamic large deformation. The PFEM is based on periodic mesh regeneration with Delaunay triangulation to avoid mesh distortion. Additional mesh smoothing and boundary node smoothing techniques are incorporated to improve the mesh quality and solution accuracy. The field variables are mapped from the old to the new mesh using the closest point projection method to minimize the mapping error. The procedures of the proposed Abaqus-based dynamic PFEM (Abaqus-DPFEM) analysis and its implementation in Abaqus are detailed. The accuracy and robustness of the proposed approach are examined via four illustrative numerical examples. The numerical results show a satisfactory agreement with published results and further confirm the applicability of the Abaqus-DPFEM to solving dynamic large-deformation problems in geotechnical engineering.