First Ph.D. paper published in CMAME

A semi-implicit material point method for coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical simulation of saturated porous media in large deformation

This paper is the first SCI publication from Jidu’s Ph.D. research at HKUST, and the foundation of the THM-coupled MPM framework that his later work on frozen soils and hydrate-bearing sediments builds upon.

Engineering systems such as geothermal energy and radioactive waste repositories involve coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) processes in porous media that can undergo large deformation. Conventional mesh-based methods struggle with mesh distortion in these problems.

In this work, we develop a stabilized material point method for THM problems in biphasic solid-fluid mixtures. A novel staggered solution scheme solves for four primary variables: solid displacement, liquid velocity, pore pressure and temperature. A semi-implicit fractional step approach handles both incompressible and weakly compressible fluids while avoiding pressure oscillations, using equal-order interpolation.

Benchmarks including the heating of a saturated half-space and thermally induced slope failure demonstrate the stability, accuracy and efficiency of the method in large-deformation THM problems.