Numerical Methods in Geotechnical Engineering – Benz & Nordal (eds)

© 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-0-415-59239-0

Analysis of dynamic penetration of objects into soil layers

J.P. Carter & M. Nazem

Centre for Geotechnical and Materials Modelling, The University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

ABSTRACT: Finite element analysis of the penetration of a solid object into a soil layer is probably one of
the most sophisticated and challenging problems in numerical analysis. In this study the Arbitrary Lagrangian-
Eulerian method is employed to study numerically the penetration of a free falling penetrometer into a layer of
soil. It is shown that this method can simulate deep penetration of objects into layers of soil accurately. Good
agreement has been found between the numerical predictions and experimental results.

1 INTRODUCTION penetration of objects into layers of soil. The main

The static Cone Penetration Test (CPT) is now a
standard in situ technique to explore geotechnical
properties of soil layers. However, this test cannot be
used easily in situations where sites are relatively inac-
cessible, such as the seabed. In these cases a Free
Falling Penetrometer (FFP) is often employed to pro-
vide information on the strength of seabed sediments.
Such tests can provide useful data such as the total
depth and time of penetration and the deceleration
characteristic of the penetrometer. Potentially at least,
these data can then be used to deduce fundamental
strength parameters for the soil in situ.
To date, no analytical solution exists in the literature
for the problem of a free-falling penetrometer in soil.
However, simulation of dynamic cone penetration by
the finite element method can provide useful informa-
tion to correlate the strength parameters of the soil to
the penetrometer travel information.
The analysis of FFP is one of the most sophisti-
cated and difficult problems in geomechanics because
of its highly nonlinear nature. The soil at the seabed is
incompressible, its strength usually varies with depth
as well as with strain rate. The penetration of a FFP into
a soil layer has the potential to cause severe mesh dis-
tortion and entanglement of elements when modelled
using more conventional finite element approaches.
The boundary conditions of the problem change con-
tinuously as the FFP penetrates deeper into the soil
layer. Due to the usually very short time of penetration,
the analyst should not normally neglect the effects of
inertia forces.
For the reasons mentioned above, the analysis
of FFP motivates the application of the Arbitrary
Lagrangian-Eulerian method, which is now becoming
well established for numerical computations in geome-
chanics (Nazem et al. 2006, 2008 and 2009a). This
paper briefly explains an ALE method based upon the
operator-split technique for simulation of the dynamic
aspects and challenges of the ALE method will be
addressed. This method is then used to simulate the
dynamic penetration of penetrometers into undrained
layers of soil existing at a seabed and the results are
discussed.
2 FINITE ELEMENT FORMULATION
2.1 ALE operator split-technique
The ALE method has been developed to eliminate
mesh distortion in Lagrangian methods. In a fully cou-
pled ALE formulation, the global equations are written
in terms of material displacements and mesh displace-
ments. This normally doubles the number of unknown
parameters, leading to significantly more expensive
analyses. Alternatively, the decoupled ALE method, or
the operator-split technique, performs the analysis in
two steps; an Updated Lagrangian (UL) step followed
by an Eulerian step.
In the UL step the incremental displacements,
velocities and accelerations are calculated for a given
load increment by solving the equilibrium equation.
The matrix form of equilibrium is usually derived
from the principle of virtual work. This principle states
that for any virtual displacement δu, equilibrium is
achieved provided:
where k is the total number of bodies in contact, σ
denotes the Cauchy stress tensor, δε is the variation of
strain due to virtual displacement, u, u̇ and ü represent

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material displacements, velocities and accelerations,
respectively, ρ and c are the material density and damp-
ing, b is the body force, q is the surface load acting on
area S of volume V , δgN and δgT are the virtual normal
and tangential gap displacements, tN and tT denote the
normal and tangential forces at the contact surface Sc .
After solving equation (1), the UL step is usually final-
ized by updating the spatial coordinates of the nodal
points according to incremental displacements.
However, the continuous updating of nodal coordi-
nates at the end of each increment alone may cause
mesh distortion in regions with relatively high defor-
mation gradients. Hence, in the next step, the distorted
mesh is refined using a suitable mesh refinement
technique. In this refinement process all variables at
nodal points as well as at integration points are trans-
ferred from the old (distorted) mesh into the new
(refined) mesh. This remapping is usually done using
the convection equation:
where df r and df denote the derivatives of an arbi-
trary function f with respect to the mesh and material
coordinates respectively, and ur represents the mesh
displacements.
2.2 Mesh refinement
As previously indicated, refining the mesh at the begin-
ning of each Euler step is very important since a
distorted mesh can lead to inaccurate results. Most
mesh refinement techniques are based on special
mesh-generation algorithms, which must consider var-
ious parameters such as the dimensions of the problem,
the type of elements to be generated and the regu-
larity of the domain. Developing such algorithms for
any arbitrary domain is usually difficult and costly.
Moreover, these algorithms do not necessary preserve
the number of nodes and number of the elements in
a mesh and they may cause significant changes in the
topology. A general method for determining the mesh
displacements based on the use of an elastic analysis
was presented by Nazem et al. (2006). The method has
been implemented for two-dimensional plane strain
problems as well as axi-symmetric problems. To obtain
the mesh displacements, we first re-discretise all the
boundaries of the problem which include the bound-
aries of each body, the material interfaces and the
loading boundaries, resulting in prescribed values of
the mesh displacements for the nodes on the bound-
aries. The nodes on the boundaries are then relocated
along the boundary as necessary. With the known total
displacements of these nodes on the boundaries, we
then perform an elastic analysis using the prescribed
displacements to obtain the optimal mesh and hence
the mesh displacements for all the internal nodes. An
important advantage of this mesh optimisation method
is its independence of element topology and problem
dimensions. The method does not require any mesh
generation algorithm, does not change the topology
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of the problem, and hence can be easily implemented
in existing finite element codes. For more details see
Nazem et al. (2006 & 2008).
2.3 Stress integration
In a large deformation analysis, the stress-strain rela-
tions must be frame independent to guarantee that
possible rigid body motions do not induce extra strains
within the material. This requirement, known as the
principle of objectivity, is usually satisfied by intro-
ducing an objective stress-rate into the constitutive
equations. An important feature of an objective stress-
rate is that it does not change the values of stress
invariants. This guarantees that a previously yielded
point remains on the yield surface after being updated
due to rigid body motion. Introducing, for instance,
the Jaumann stress rate into the constitutive equations
provides:
where C ep is the constitutive matrix, κ denotes a set of
hardening parameters and ω is the spin tensor. Nazem
et al. (2009b) proposed alternative algorithms for inte-
grating equation (3) and showed that it is slightly more
efficient to apply rigid body corrections while integrat-
ing the constitutive equations. This strategy is adopted
in this study.
2.4 Strain rate effects
The undrained shear strength of cohesive soils often
depends on the rate of straining (Graham et al. 1983).
This effect can be expressed typically by the following
equation:
where su represents the undrained shear strength of
soil, su,ref is a reference undrained shear strength mea-
sured at a reference strain rate of γ̇ref , γ̇ denotes the
strain rate and λ is the rate of increase per log cycle of
time. A typical value γ̇ref = 0.01 per hour was adopted
in the numerical computations reported in the current
study.
2.5 ALE algorithm
The ALE method explained in previous sections has
been implemented in the finite element code, SNAC,
developed at the University of Newcastle, Australia. A
summary of the ALE algorithm is as follows.
I. Phase 1- UL step
1. Assemble the global stiffness matrix and load
vector and solve the momentum equation.
2. Compute the strain increments and integrate the
constitutive equations to update the stresses and
hardening parameters.
3. Iterate until the unbalanced forces are smaller than
a prescribed tolerance.
4. Update the material coordinates according to the
incremental displacements.
II. Phase 2- Eulerian step
1. Check the boundaries and relocate the nodes on the
boundaries wherever necessary.
2. Compute the new mesh coordinates by performing
an elastic analysis.
3. Remap the state variables at integration points as
well as at nodal points using equation (1).
4. Update the total displacements vector according to
the new mesh displacements and previous material
displacements.
5. Set the material coordinates equal to the mesh
coordinates for the next time step.
6. Compute internal forces, check equilibrium as
well as plasticity consistency and conduct further
iterations if necessary.

3 NUMERICAL ANALYSIS

3.1 Problem description

We consider a rigid penetrometer falling freely into
an undrained soil layer in the vertical direction. Due
to axial symmetry, only one-half of the problem cross
section is discretised by the finite element mesh shown
in Figure 1. The mesh consists of 10252 nodes and
4988 6-noded triangular elements each containing 6
integration points. Note that vo , m, and d shown in
Figure 1 represent the initial velocity, mass and diam-
eter of the penetrometer, respectively. In all problems
a smooth contact surface between the soil and the pen-
etrometer is assumed. The soil layer is represented by
an associatedTresca material model. Due to the incom-
pressibility of most seabed soil deposits in the short
term, Poisson’s ratio, νu , was set equal to 0.49 (as an
approximation of 0.5). The undrained Young’s mod-
ulus of the soil was assumed to be Eu . No material
damping was assumed in the model. The energy dis-
sipation was due entirely to a combination of plastic
deformation of the soil and radiation damping. The
former was achieved by assuming a Tresca yield cri-
terion with associated plastic flow and the latter was
achieved using energy absorbing boundaries for the Figure 1. Finite element mesh of free falling penetrometer.
finite element mesh.
Given the values of v0 , m, d, and mechanical prop- Table 1 shows that the results obtained by the finite
erties of the soil, the finite element method is able element method agree well with the experimental tests
to predict the soil response and provide the total results. Note that in all finite element analyses the ratio
penetration, p, and total time of penetration, tp . Eu /su,ref was assumed to be 200 and the value of λ was
set equal to 0.2.
3.2 Validation
Experimental validation of the ALE method described
3.3 Typical results
here has been reported previously by Carter et al.
(2010) and the experimental tests were undertaken at The total penetration depth and travel time of the object
the University of Sydney, Australia. depend on several parameters such as its initial kinetic

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Table 1. Experimental validation of ALE predictions. ALE method can be used to analyse the problem accu-
rately. The accuracy of the method was verified by
su,ref d m v0 p/d p/d comparing numerical results with those obtained from
No kPa mm g m/s tests ALE the experimental tests.
The results obtained also indicate that the total pen-
1 5.15 20 262 4.77 4.33 3.99
etration depth depends on the strain rates developed
2 5.15 20 353 4.77 4.80 5.22
3 5.15 20 446 4.75 5.20 6.50 in the soil. Larger values of the rate parameter will
4 5.15 20 539 4.74 7.05 7.80 result generally in smaller values of the total depth of
5 5.15 20 631 4.76 7.94 9.36 penetration.
6 7.46 40 714 4.77 1.14 1.39 It is also noted that the analyses conducted in this
7 6.91 40 713 4.75 1.39 1.44 study assumed zero friction between the penetrometer
8 6.91 30 736 4.75 2.75 2.71 and soil. The effect of friction will be investigated in
9 4.45 20 257 4.75 4.45 4.38 future work, but it is noted that previous studies have
indicated that its influence on penetrometers and other
objects moving through soil is not usually dominant,
at least in clay-like soils. Examples can be seen in
static CPT tests where the magnitude of the side fric-
tion force is usually much small than the overall end
bearing resistance, and in the theoretical solution for
the T-bar test, where the non-dimensional resistance
factors vary from about 9 to 11, i.e., about 20% differ-
ence at most, depending on the assumption made about
the level of adhesive resistance (Randolph & Houlsby
1986). However, it is also noted that this outcome is
likely to depend on the shape of the object penetrating
the soil.

Figure 2. Normalised kinetic energy versus normalised
penetration, assuming Eu /su,ref = 200, su,ref = 25 kPa and
d = 4 cm.
energy and soil properties. Among these parameters,
we show the effect of rate parameter, λ, on penetra-
tion values. For brevity, attention is confined to cases
where Eu /su,ref = 200, d = 4 cm and su,ref = 25 kPa.
Normalised kinetic energy versus normalised pene-
tration is plotted in Figure 2 for different values of
λ, including 0.0, 0.1 and 0.2. Figure 2 shows that
increasing the value of the rate parameter λ decreases
the final penetration depth significantly and this is
because large values of λ correspond to soils that are
effectively stronger during rapid undrained shearing.
4 CONCLUSIONS
A robust finite element procedure based upon the
Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) operator split
technique has been presented and the method has been
used to predict the penetration of a free falling pen-
etrometer (FFP) into the seabed. It was shown that the
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