A Damage Mechanics Model for Porous Media

When considering saturated poroelastic geomaterials, their consolidation response can be influenced by the evolution of damage in the porous skeleton. This paper introduces the concept of effective stress and the modified Mohr–Coulomb criterion as a means for examining the problem of consolidation response of a damage-susceptible poroelastic geomaterial, which is considered to be a novel development in the application of damage mechanics to the study of poroelastic phenomena. Then, a damage mechanics model for porous media is established and applied to analyze the Biot’s consolidation problem of damaged soils. The comparison between the numerical predictions and the classical solutions shows that the computational damage model developed in this paper is effective and feasible in analyzing the consolidation problem of damaged porous media.