Director:  

Dr. Len Schwer - SE&CS  
Course: Geomaterial Modeling with LS-DYNA (PDF Class description)

Geomaterial Modeling

Geomaterials, which include soil, rock, and concrete are common building materials for civil and defense structures. 

Soil and rock are natural materials, often used to support or embed structures. Examples of the use of soil and rock:

• civil construction foundations rest on soil or rock.
• tunnel structures pass through soil and rock.
• in defense applications, soil and rock are often used to hide installations and  strong rock types can act as a protective barrier.

Concrete, especially reinforced concrete, is a widely used construction material in both civil and defense applications. The low cost, and easy formability of concrete, often makes it the optimum material for construction. The range of physical sizes of concrete structures run from a simple concrete storage pad to the largest dam construction project in the world being carried out in China.

Strength Characteristics:  Geomaterials span a wide range from relatively weak sands to one of nature’s strongest material, granite. Although these two geomaterials span a wide strength range, their constitutive response characteristics are relatively similar; although very different from more familiar common metal constitutive responses.