Alternative mesh refinement methods for analysing soil penetration problems

Despite recent advances in the finite element method, mesh distortion due to large deformations may still occur in some problems such as footings subjected to deep penetration or objects penetrating into a soil layer. In order to overcome mesh distortion, robust remeshing techniques are required. In this paper the performance of four remeshing methods is studied by analysing a free falling penetrometer penetrating into an undrained layer of soil. These techniques are implemented within the framework of the Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian method and include the refinement based on an elastic relocation, a technique based on the Radial Basis Functions, the Spring Analogy method, and the Elastic Hardening method. Since one of the challenging problems in a large deformation analysis is dealing with complex boundary shapes, a scheme based on the B-Splines used in isogeometric analysis is also presented here.