Stability analysis of fluid-saturated cracked media under quasi-static

loadings

Vincent Monchiet & Djimedo Kondo

Laboratoire de Mcanique de Lille, UMR CNRS USTL Villeneuve dAscq, France

ABSTRACT: The paper is devoted to a stability analysis of poroelastic damaged materials. For this purpose a
linear perturbation analysis is first performed. It is shown that in the context of saturated material with evolving
damage, many results are qualitatively similar to those already established in associative plasticity context: the
unbounded growth of perturbation corresponds to the strain localization conditions. However, in contrast to the
plastic materials, the linear perturbation analysis leads to an unstable behavior (existence of a trivial positive
value of eigenvalue of the perturbed problem), from the very beginning of the damage process. This questionable
result has motivated a fully non-linear stability analysis which indicates a first step of perturbation growth (in
agreement with the linear analysis) followed by decaying perturbations. Interestingly, the non linear analysis
also predicts a loss of stability at the deformation level which corresponds to the onset of strain localization.

1 INTRODUCTION 2 BRIEF ACCOUNT OF POROELASTICITY

OF DAMAGED MATERIALS
The macroscopic behavior of various geomaterials
such as concrete or brittle rocks is strongly affected In this section, we briefly present the general frame-
by the presence and growth of microcracks. For fully work of the micromechanics-based of poroelastic
saturated geomaterials, the coupling between fluid damage models considered below for the stability
pressure and the inelastic deformation due to cracks analysis.
propagation leads to complex behaviors which include Consider a representative volume element (r.v.e.)
the physical deterioration of the material properties consisting in a solid matrix weakened by fluid-
and the occurrence of instabilities phenomena at high saturated cracks (see Figure 1).
loading states. The understanding of such instabili- For simplicity, damage is assumed to be described
ties phenomena is of a fundamental importance in by a single scalar variable d (this corresponds either
several practical problems in geomechanics (e.g. reser- to damage induced by a system of parallel cracks,
voir engineering, radioactive waste storage, etc.). It or to isotropic damage, with cracks density param-
has been the subject of many studies, classically per- eter d). From a micromechanical point of view, d
formed using a bifurcation analysis which provides
conditions for the strain localization (see for instance
(Loret and Prevost 1991)). Following the pioneering E .x
perturbation approach of Rice (Rice 1975) (in which
instability is understood as the exponential growth of a
small perturbation), many authors among which (Rud-
nicki 1983), (Rudnicki 2000); (Vardoulakis 1996a),
(Vardoulakis 1996b) provided studies on instabilities
of porous media under drained or undrained conditions
etc. Recently, (Benallal and Comi 2003) developed
a perturbation growth and localization analysis of p
poroplastic materials, focusing on two limiting cases,
namely the unbounded perturbation growth and the
onset of growth of the perturbation. Their work, which
concern plastic porous materials, has the interest of
unifying bifurcation and stability analysis. The present
study follows this work and extends it to damage Figure 1. Representative volume element (r.v.e.): solid
phenomena. matrix weakened by fluid-saturated cracks at pressure p.

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Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
is a cracks density parameter (see (Budiansky and The damage rate is obtained by adopting the nor-
OConnel 1976)). For instance, in the case of penny mality rule: d = f
/F d during a damaging process.
shaped cracks with uniform radius a, d = N a3 , N The damage multiplier  is given by the classi-
being the number of cracks per unit volume. Dam- cal Kuhn-Tucker condition f = 0 which also reads
age affects not only the macroscopic tangent stiffness
F = dR/d. In an unloading process d = 0. The rate
d
tensor of the medium but also the tangent poroelastic
formulation of the poroelastic damage law takes then
properties (Biot tensor and Biot modulus).
the following form:
The state variables of the poromechanical behavior
of the damaged materials are the macroscopic strain
E, the pressure p of the fluid saturating the cracks and
the internal damage variable in the form of a scalar d.
The macroscopic poroelastic behavior of the cracked
medium is given by the thermodynamics potential,
denoted
:
in which Ad and S are defined by:

in which Cd is the macroscopic drained stiffness ten-

sor of the cracked medium, B is the Biot tensor and M
the Biot modulus. B and M are related to the drained
properties of the materials by the following rela- The tangent operators related to (6) are defined by:
tions (see for instance (Auriault and Sanchez-Palencia
1977), (Dormieux, Lemarchand, Kondo, and Fairbairn
2004)):

in which Cdt is the drained tangent stiffness tensor, Bt

and Mt are respectively the tangent Biot tensor and the
in which 1 is the second order identity tensor tangent Biot modulus:
and I the symmetric fourth order identity tensor:
Iijkl = 1/2(ik jl + il jk ). The different state laws read
then:

H d is the strain hardening modulus under drained

conditions:

in which ! is the macroscopic stress tensor, is the For the purpose of the stability analysis, the two
pore volume change. Tensor E represents the effective classical types of evolution will be distinguished:
strain defined by: drained (conditions p = 0) for which !
= Cdt : E,

and undrained evolutions ( = 0 for an incompress-
ible fluid). In the case of undrained evolutions the
poromechanical response is given by:
Relation (3)-(c) defines the thermodynamics force F d ,
associated to the damage variable d. Thermodynamics
arguments based on the examination of the intrinsic
dissipation suggest to choose the damage criterion in with the undrained tangent stiffness:
the form:

in which R(d) represents the resistance of the material

to cracks propagation at a given value of d.

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Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
In order to complete the description of the behavior of in which Cpert is a fourth order tensor defined by :
the cracked medium, the momentum balance equation
and a combination of Darcys law and mass balance
equation must be considered:

in which g represents the body forces in the solid/fluid

mixture and g f the fluid volume forces. kf is the perme-
ability of the medium; although cracks must affect the
permeability at high cracks density level, we assume with:
for simplicity that kf is constant during the damage
process. Besides (13), note also that the strain must be
compatible: E = s u.

3 LINEAR PERTURBATION ANALYSIS IN THE

CONTEXT OF DAMAGED MATERIALS
is defined as: = kf 2 /. The condition for the
We aim now at presenting the linear perturbation anal- existence of a non trivial solution is:
ysis and its application to the fluid-saturated damaged
material. In subsection 3.4, the results are analyzed on
the basis of three different homogenization schemes
allowing to determine the impact of cracks on the Using the identity det(A + a a) = det(A) + a.A.a
macroscopic poroelastic properties. is the adjoint of A1 ,
(valid for any A and a), in which A
The cracked saturated medium is assumed to fol-
it is shown that the general solution of the perturbed
low a quasi-static evolution during the damage process
problem satisfies:
(d > 0); such evolution is described by (6), (13), and
the consistency condition. We formally denote the set
of variables : u,E,!, p, , d, F d . The use of a perturba-
tion analysis for the detection of instabilities consists
to superpose an infinitesimal perturbation to the
reference solution 0 ( = 0 + ) and to study the
evolution of the system during the time. 3.2 Solution to the linearized problem
We aim now at solving the perturbed problem through
the solution of (17). Following the analysis pro-
3.1 Linear perturbation analysis posed by (Benallal and Comi 2003) in the context of
poroplasticity, we consider now two limiting cases:
Due to the infinitesimal character of the perturbation,
it is possible to linearize the equations of the perturbed the perturbation follows an evolution under drained
problem around the reference solution. For poroelas- conditions, e.g. p = 0. This case is associated to
tic damaged materials, such linearized equations are the limit = in the equations of the perturbed
given in appendix. problem. Therefore:
Following (Benallal and Comi 2003), the perturba-
tion is chosen in the form = exp(ix.n + t), in
which n is any unit vector, the wave number and
the local rate of growth of the perturbation; i is
the imaginary number (i2 = 1). The reformulation Denoting Qd = n.Cd .n, and using the identity
of the problem (for the details the reader must refer to
(Monchiet 2003) (Monchiet and Kondo 2005)) leads
to an eigenvalue problem, for which it is shown that
and are solutions of:

1 = det(A)1
A.A

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Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
 it is shown that for an evolution of the perturbation
under drained conditions:
in which Q1d , Q2d , Q3d are the invariants of Qd :
the perturbation follows an evolution under
undrained conditions, e.g. = 0. This corresponds
to the limit = 0. Therefore:
where Cu , AU u
and H are defined by:
which leads for the perturbed problem to:
Q1u , Q2u , Q3u are the invariants of Qu = n.Cu .n.
3.3 Discussion
In any case, the reference solution is stable if all the
solutions of the perturbed problem have negative real
part; it is unstable when there exist at least one value
having a positive real part. The bifurcation points,
corresponding to the loss of stability of the system,
are considered by examining the two following con-
ditions: Re() = 0 or Re() undergoes a discontinuity;
Re() = . The last case corresponds to an unbounded
growth of perturbation which is observed as in asso-
ciative poro-plasticity (see (Benallal and Comi 2003)),
appears equivalent to strain localization. It is worth
noticing that:
= and = , the condition (19) is simi-
lar to the one proposed by (Loret and Prevost
1991) for saturated porous materials under drained
conditions:
for = 0 and = , the condition (23) involves
only the undrained tangent stiffness:
Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
As a partial conclusion, the results obtained in the con-
text of saturated material undergoing damage, many
results are qualitatively similar to the one already exist-
ing in associative plasticity context: the unbounded
growth of perturbation corresponds to the strain local-
ization conditions. This point will be illustrated in
subsection 3.4 devoted to the case of an isotropic
damage.
3.4 Application to isotropic damage
We present now an application of the above results
to the case of an isotropic solid matrix affected by
an isotropic damage. The elastic stiffness tensor of
the solid matrix reads then Cs = 3k s J + 2s K, in
which k s and s are respectively the compressibility
modulus and the shear modulus, J and K are classi-
cally defined by 3J = 1 1, K = I J. The damaged
stiffness reads: Cd = 3k(d)J + 2(d)K, k(d) and (d)
being respectively the compressibility and the shear
modulus at a given value of damage. Three homog-
enization schemes are considered for the cracked
media:
The Eshelby estimate:
The Mori-Tanaka estimate (which aims to account
for the cracks interaction):
The Ponte-Castaneda and Willis scheme which aims
to account for the cracks interaction and for spatial
distribution of cracks:
For R(d) the choice R(d) = h(1 + rd) is made. It is
then shown that among the different solutions to the
perturbed problem, there is a simple solution:
which is a positive real; this solution appears since the
very beginning of the damage process. This observa-
tion suggests that the reference solution is unstable.
For illustration purpose, we present an application to
the particular cases of an isotropic loading state.
634
 dloc there exist always at least a solution having a pos-
1 PCW, = 0, = itive real part, whatever the damage level. Clearly,
the linear perturbation analysis leads to an unsta-
ble behavior (existence of a trivial positive value of
0.8 ) from the very beginning of the damage process.
Esh, = 0, = Moreover, since the first levels of damage, the per-
0.6 turbation level is not negligible comparatively to the
reference solution ( > 1). According to (Rousselier
0.4 PCW, = , = ,
2001), the relevant parameter for instability is not
but the relative growth factor in the particular case
of quasi-static evolutions. An effective instability
0.2 is achieved only when the perturbation is growing
Esh, = , = ,
much faster than the reference solution. Therefore,
s for clarification purpose, a non linear analysis is
0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 also due.
Figure 2. Strain localization conditions under isotropic
loading: values of the isotropic damage at the onset of local-
ization, as function of Poissons ratio of the solid matrix. A 4 NON LINEAR STABILITY ANALYSIS
value of r = 25 is used.
We propose in this section a numerical solution to the
Re() Eshelby = + Re() Eshelby = 0 perturbed problem in which the non linear term are
20
15
20 kept. We assumed again an isotropic state of damage
15
10 10
and of loading. Moreover, for simplicity, only the dilute
5
d
5
d
scheme is considered. The development of (36) around
0 0 1
-5
0.5 1
-5
0.5
an equilibrium position gives:
-10 -10
-15 -15
-20 -20

Re() Mori Tanka = + Re() Mori Tanka = 0

10 10

5 5

0 d 0 d
0.5 1 0.5 1

-5 -5

-10 -10 The perturbation is now chosen in the following form:

Re() PCW = + Re() PCW = 0
10 10

in which is a function of time. The rewritten per-

5 5

0
0.5 1
d 0 0.5 1
d turbed system of equations can be reduced to a non
-5 linear problem for the variables u and d. This non lin-
-5
ear problem has been numerically solved by using a
-10 -10
Newton-Raphson method.
Figure 4 shows the evolution of d/ d0 for different
Figure 3. Evolution of as function of d 0 for the two
limiting cases = 0 and = : prediction of the different damage level d 0 . For low damage levels, the non-linear
homogenization schemes.The following values of parameters stability analysis shows a first step of perturbation
are used: r = 25; h = 6104 and s = 0.19. growth (in agreement with the linear perturbation anal-
ysis) followed by decaying perturbations leading to a
saturation state. For a critical value of damage which
The first illustration concerns the localization con-
corresponds to strain localization, the perturbation
dition or equivalently the unbounded growth of per-
undergoes a discontinuity leading to its unbounded
turbation (see Figure 2).
growth.
On Figure 3 are plotted the solutions = /d 0 , for
the two limiting cases = 0 and = , and for the
different homogenization schemes. The results clearly
5 CONCLUSIONS
show that:
the transitions Re() = 0 and = , do not corre- This study concerns a stability analysis of poroelas-
spond to loss of stability of the system. tic material undergoing damage process. Damage is

635
Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK

24
2 4 6 8
Figure 4. Evolution, for different damage levels, of
the perturbation predicted by the non linear analysis.
The following numerical values of parameters are used:
r = 150; h = 104 , s = 0.13; E s = 17800 MPa; d = 102
0
= 104 .
and d(0)
generated by fluid-saturated cracks at pressure p. The
stability analysis is first performed by using the so
called linear perturbation technique. It is then shown
that, similar to associative plastic materials, in dam-
aged materials the unbounded growth of perturbation
corresponds to the classical strain localization con-
ditions. However, in contrast to the plastic analysis,
it is observed that the linear perturbation analysis
shows an unstable behavior from the very beginning
of the inelastic deformation process. This questionable
result has motivated a fully non-linear stability anal-
ysis which has been developed in the isotropic case.
The numerical results obtained by using a Newton-
Raphson method, indicate a first step of perturbation
growth (in a good agreement with the linear analysis)
followed by the decay of the perturbations. Interest-
ingly at the onset of strain localization, the non linear
analysis predicts a loss of stability which occurs before
the onset of localization.
6 APPENDIX
Linearized equations of the perturbed problem for
poroelastic damaged materials
Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
in which Ap , S p and H p are defined by:
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