Discontinuous bifurcation analysis of thermodynamically consistent gradient poroplastic materials

In this work, analytical and numerical solutions of the condition for discontinuous bifurcation of thermodynamically consistent gradient-based poroplastic materials are obtained and evaluated. The main aim is the analysis of the potentials for localized failure modes in the form of discontinuous bifurcation in partially saturated gradient-based poroplastic materials as well as the dependence of these potentials on the current hydraulic and stress conditions. Also the main differences with the localization conditions of the related local theory for poroplastic materials are evaluated to perfectly understand the regularization capabilities of the non-local gradient-based one. Firstly, the condition for discontinuous bifurcation is formulated from wave propagation analyses in poroplastic media. The material formulation employed in this work for the spectral properties evaluation of the discontinuous bifurcation condition is the thermodynamically consistent, gradient-based modified Cam Clay model for partially saturated porous media previously proposed by the authors. The main and novel feature of this constitutive theory is the inclusion of a gradient internal length of the porous phase which, together with the characteristic length of the solid skeleton, comprehensively defined the non-local characteristics of the represented porous material. After presenting the fundamental equations of the thermodynamically consistent gradient based poroplastic constitutive model, the analytical expressions of the critical hardening/softening modulus for discontinuous bifurcation under both drained and undrained conditions are obtained. As a particular case, the related local constitutive model is also evaluated from the discontinuous bifurcation condition stand point. Then, the localization analysis of the thermodynamically consistent non-local and local poroplastic Cam Clay theories is performed. The results demonstrate, on the one hand and related to the local poroplastic material, the decisive role of the pore pressure and of the volumetric non-associativity degree on the location of the transition point between ductile and brittle failure regimes in the stress space. On the other hand, the results demonstrate as well the regularization capabilities of the non-local gradient-based poroplastic theory, with exception of a particular stress condition which is also evaluated in this work Finally, it is also shown that, due to dependence of the characteristic lengths for the pore and skeleton phases on the hydraulic and stress conditions, the non-local theory is able to reproduce the strong reduction of failure diffusion that takes place under both, low confinement and low pore pressure of partially saturated porous materials, without loosing, however, the ellipticity of the related differential equations. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.