Lars Blatny (ETH Zurich / SLF Davos)

Granular materials can behave with both solid-like and fluid-like properties, making their mechanical modeling particularly challenging. Capturing features such as shear localization, cohesion and density variations may be more easily handled in models that go beyond traditional fluid descriptions. In the framework of elasto-viscoplasticity, the Material Point Method (MPM) offers a way to describe both flowing and quasi-static regimes. This hybrid Eulerian–Lagrangian numerical scheme naturally handles large deformations and free surfaces without suffering from mesh distortion. In this talk, I will showcase the potential of MPM with elasto-viscoplastic models to capture complex granular behavior, illustrated through idealized and complex flow problems. In particular, I will give the example of snow as a highly cohesive and compressible granular medium and how a recently proposed model which combines the μ(I)-rheology with critical state soil mechanics can be used to model such media.