CAREER: A Non-local Mathematical and Computational Paradigm for Failure in Unsaturated Soils: Integrated Research and Education through High Performance Computing

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This Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) grant will address fundamental knowledge gaps preventing the accurate characterization of multiphysics conditions driving failure (e.g., shear bands/cracks) of unsaturated soils. Unsaturated soil mechanics plays a vital role in geohazard assessment, as well as energy, environmental, and coastal geotechnics. Advances in these fields are hindered by unsaturated soil failure mechanisms that are poorly characterized and thus difficult to predict and mitigate. Such failures involve coupled multiphysics processes and arbitrary shear bands/cracks at multiple space and time scales. With recent advances in high-performance computing (HPC), computational modeling is becoming increasingly crucial for advancing our ability to characterize, predict, and mitigate such failures. This powerful tool must be coupled with new and robust numerical methods that are designed to harness and optimize this capability. This CAREER project will develop a novel non-local mathematical and computational paradigm for modeling failure phenomena in non-isothermal unsaturated soils through HPC. The hypothesis is that material heterogeneities and environmental loads are the critical triggers for failures (shear bands/cracks) in unsaturated soils, and that the prediction of such failures can be achieved via coupling HPC with new physics-based numerical tools. The rigorous integration of unsaturated soil mechanics, interface physics, poromechanics, thermodynamics, non-local vector calculus, and HPC can potentially revolutionize our modeling techniques for multiscale, multiphysics problems. Integrated research and educational activities through HPC will foster the interest of high-school and underrepresented students in STEM educations and careers and engage graduate students in globally collaborative research and effective dissemination of scientific knowledge to a diverse audience. The cultivated diverse collaboration network, including NSF Centers, U.S. national laboratories, leading consulting firms, and top global institutions, will increase the national and global impacts of this project and has the added benefit of exposing students to a dynamic team.The research goal of this CAREER grant is to better characterize and predict failures in unsaturated soils under environmental loads. This project will (i) formulate, implement, and validate a novel multiphysics peri-poromechanics (PPM) paradigm using non-local vector calculus and basic principles of physics and mechanics, and (ii) conduct extensive computational experiments through HPC. The new knowledge generated by this project includes a fundamental mechanistic understanding of multiphysics conditions driving failures of unsaturated soils that is crucial for building sustainable and resilient civil infrastructure. A significant outcome of this project is expected to be a novel multiphysics PPM paradigm that can potentially transform mathematical and computational modeling of failures in unsaturated soils due to its physical and mathematical consistency across multiple spatial scales. Original contributions expected are: (i) A novel physically, mathematically and computationally consistent paradigm for better modeling soil multiphysics; (ii) Next-generation non-local constitutive models for unsaturated soils; (iii) A validated open-source HPC tool for predicting unsaturated soil failures; and (iv) A new mechanistic understanding of multiphysics conditions driving failures in unsaturated soils. The educational plan will challenge and prepare next-generation engineers and scientists with a diverse knowledge base by integrating fundamental principles of mathematics, physics, mechanics, and HPC. This project will implement a series of initiatives, including two course modules on key concepts in unsaturated soil failure analysis and the vital role of HPC in basic scientific research, a cloud computing app, a dedicated wiki page, and NSF SimCenter and ASCE webinars.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.