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Soil flow is involved in many earth surface processes such as debris flows and landslides. It is a very challenging task to model this large deformational phenomenon because of the extreme change in material configurations and properties when soil flows. Most of the existing models require a two-dimensional (2D) simplification of actual systems, which are however three-dimensional (3D). To overcome this issue, we develop a novel 3D particle finite element method (PFEM) for direct simulation of complex soil flows in 3D space. Our PFEM model implemented in a fully implicit solution framework based on a generalised Hellinger–Reissner variational principle permits the use of a large time step without compromising the numerical stability. A mixed quadratic-linear element is used to avoid volumetric locking issues and ensure computational accuracy. The correctness and robustness of our 3D PFEM formulation for modelling large deformational soil flow problems are demonstrated by a series of benchmarks against analytical or independent numerical solutions. Our model can serve as an effective tool to support the assessment of catastrophic soil slope failures and subsequent runout behaviours.

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The self-boring pressuremeter (SBP) test was designed to measure in situ engineering properties of the ground with a relatively small amount of disturbance. The properties that may be inferred from the test depend on the mechanical model used for its interpretation and on the significance given to other previously available information. In this paper, numerical modelling using the advanced kinematic hardening structure model (KHSM) for natural soils has been performed to investigate the influence of the initial structure and the degradation of structure on the SBP cavity pore pressures and expansion curves within London Clay. The validation of the KHSM against well-known analytical solutions and the calibration procedure used to identify the material parameters are presented. The numerical analyses reveal that the simulations of the SBP tests using the KHSM model provide a very close match of the expansion curves to the experimental data, but underestimate the pore pressures at the initial stage of the SBP expansion test. A parametric study has been carried out to determine the effects induced by the parameters of the destructuration model along with the disturbance experienced during the SBP installation, which is difficult to estimate in situ. Two disturbance scenarios were considered where the initial structure was assumed to vary linearly across an area close to the wall of the cavity. These simulations indicate that accounting for installation disturbance leads to a substantial improvement in pore pressure predictions for the SBP.

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