A Numerical Approach to the Non-convex Dynamic Problem of Pipeline-soil Interaction Under Environmental Effects

A numerical approach for a problem arising in Civil and Environmental Engineering is presented. This problem concerns the dynamic soil-pipeline interaction, when unilateral contact conditions due to tensionless and elastoplastic softening/fracturing behaviour of the soil as well as due to gapping caused by earthquake excitations are taken into account. Moreover, soil-capacity degradation due to environmental effects are taken into account. The mathematical formulation of this dynamic elastoplasticity problem leads to a system of partial differential equations with equality domain and inequality boundary conditions. The proposed numerical approach is based on a double discretization, in space and time, and on mathematical programming methods. First, in space the finite element method (FEM) is used for the simulation of the pipeline and the unilateral contact interface, in combination with the boundary element method (BEM) for the soil simulation. Concepts of the non-convex analysis are used. Next, with the aid of Laplace transform, the equality problem conditions are transformed to convolutional ones involving as unknowns the unilateral quantities only. So the number of unknowns is significantly reduced. Then a marching-time approach is applied and a non-convex linear complementarity problem is solved in each time-step.