ABSTRACT
Reliability assessment of soil structures and suitable numerical methods for computational simulations still are considerable challenges for industry and science. This is due to the natural scattering of material properties, the very high complexity of the soil structure on different length scales and the load bearing mechanisms as well as the residual stress state due to individual load histories. The design security concept of soil structures requires high safety factors unlike industrially manufactured materials like steel or concrete. A better understanding of the nature and influence of the uncertainties and errors could help to develop a more reliable risk assessment and to reduce inefficient safety factors. For this, we realize a new research project within the new priority program SPP 1886, installed by the DFG and focusing on polymorphic uncertainty quantification. In the present subproject (sp12), the focus is on quantification and assessment of polymorphic uncertainties in computational simulations of earth structures, especially for fluid-saturated soils. To describe the strongly coupled solid-fluid response behavior, the theory of porous media (TPM) is used and solved with the Finite Element Method (FEM) (De Boer 2012, Ehlers 2002). Motivated by structural optimization research, the Variational Sensitivity Analysis (VSA) provides detailed information about the current equilibrium state by means of just one single run of the simulation. In this work the methodology is transferred to quantify aleatoric uncertainties, see (Henning & Ricken 2017). The method allows an immediate decision support, e.g. for site investigators. Not only the computational effort but also the applicability to any arbitrary FE-Model are great advantages of this approach, which provides a lot of additional information for end-users as well as researchers. After discussing the basic framework, governing equations and algorithmic implementation of the proposed model, we demonstrate the applicability by a simple boundary value problem.
