Material point method for large deformation seismic response analysis

Summary

Landslides triggered by earthquakes are one of the major seismic hazards and can cause large damages and fatalities. The material point method (MPM) has become a popular technique to model such large mass movements. A limitation of existing MPM implementations is the lack of appropriate boundary conditions to perform seismic response analysis of slopes. To bridge this gap, an extension to the basic MPM framework is presented for simulating the seismic triggering and subsequent collapse of slopes within a single analysis step. The concepts of a compliant base boundary and free-field columns are applied within the MPM framework enabling the direct application of input ground motions and accounting for the absorption of outgoing waves.

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