1. Advanced Soil Constitutive Models Incorporation of State-of-the-Art Soil Models: Implement widely used constitutive soil models such as: Mohr-Coulomb (basic, elastic-perfectly plastic). Modified Cam-Clay for normally consolidated clays. Hardening Soil Model for capturing stiffness variation under different loading paths. Drucker-Prager for cohesive-frictional materials. Soft Soil Creep for time-dependent deformations in soft soils. Include anisotropic models for better accuracy in layered soil systems, considering fabric orientation and stress history. Nonlinear Soil Behavior Under Cyclic and Dynamic Loading: Develop a cyclic loading module to simulate stress-strain hysteresis under repeated loading, including strain hardening and degradation. Add liquefaction-specific models to evaluate post-seismic shear strength loss. User-Defined Material Models: Allow custom soil models via scripting or user-defined input functions, enabling researchers to include cutting-edge formulations tailored to specific needs.
2. Advanced Boundary and Initial Condition Handling Boundary Condition Enhancement: Include infinite elements or absorbent boundaries to reduce wave reflections in dynamic analyses. Automate generation of compatible soil-structure boundary conditions for common foundation types (e.g., shallow, piled, and raft). Initial Stress and Strain State: Enable pre-stress and strain initialization based on geostatic equilibrium, with user input for complex initial states.
3. Dynamic and Nonlinear Analysis Features Dynamic Soil-Structure Coupling: Integrate real-time interaction effects under seismic or vibration loading with time-history or modal superposition methods. Include frequency-dependent soil damping models for better simulation of energy dissipation in dynamic problems. Nonlinear Interaction Effects: Model gap formation and sliding at the soil-structure interface, with support for degradation of interface stiffness under cyclic loading. Allow advanced coupling of foundation uplift with soil yielding and plasticity.
4. Solver Enhancements for SSI Analysis Improved Nonlinear Solver: Develop a hybrid solver capable of handling dynamic explicit steps combined with implicit static equilibrium steps for SSI. Optimize for parallel processing and GPU acceleration to handle large models with fine meshing. Integration of Sub-Structuring Techniques: Allow for sub-structuring to divide large SSI problems into manageable sections, improving computational efficiency.
5. Pre- and Post-Processing Improvements Enhanced Visualization: Add real-time visualization for: Dynamic deformation of soil layers. Propagation of seismic waves. Stress redistribution in soil and structure. Include 3D contour mapping of liquefaction zones and post-seismic settlements. Streamlined Pre-Processing: Provide tools for: Automatic generation of soil layers based on geotechnical investigation reports. Embedded pile generation with customized soil-pile interaction properties. Integrate auto-meshing tools optimized for layered or sloped soil strata. 6. Validation and Benchmarking Framework Include a library of validated case studies for comparing ARSA results against physical models, analytical solutions, and well-established software like Bentley PLAXIS. Enable users to conduct benchmark tests for custom scenarios to ensure model reliability under various soil conditions.
