An adaptive time integration scheme for blast loading on a saturated soil mass

This paper presents a time integration scheme capable of simulating blast loading of relatively high frequency on porous media, using coarse meshes. The scheme is based on the partition of unity finite element method. The discontinuity is imposed on the velocity field, while the displacement field is kept continuous. The velocity discontinuity is postulated to occur in the time domain. The developed time integration scheme is unconditionally stable and has controllable numerical dissipation in the high frequency range. An important feature of the time scheme is that it allows for controlling the numerical damping in a consistent way. The time scheme has been implemented in combination with Biot’s theory of wave propagation in saturated porous media. Numerical examples have demonstrated that the proposed time scheme is, in addition to being accurate and stable, highly effective for coarse meshes. This makes the developed scheme suitable for large scale finite element analysis.