Failure mechanisms in coupled soil-foundation systems
. Behavior of soil is usually described with continuum type of failure models such as Mohr-Coulomb or Drucker-Prager model. The main advantage of these models is in a relatively simple and efficient way of predicting the main tendencies and overall behavior of soil in failure analysis of interest for engineering practice. However, the main shortcoming of these models is that they are not able to capture post-peak behavior of soil nor the corresponding failure modes under extreme loading. In this paper we will significantly improve on this state-of-the-art. In particular, we propose the use of a discrete beam lattice model to provide a sharp prediction of inelastic response and failure mechanisms in coupled soil-foundation systems. In the discrete beam lattice model used in this paper, soil is meshed with one-dimensional Timoshenko beam finite elements with embedded strong discontinuities in axial and transverse direction capable of representing crack propagation in mode I and mode II. Mode I relates to crack opening, and mode II relates to crack sliding. To take into account material heterogeneities, we determine fracture limits for each Timoshenko beam with Gaussian random distribution. We compare the results obtained using the discrete beam lattice model against those obtained using the modified three-surface elasto-plastic cap model.