Immersed isogeometric Boundary Elements: A user friendly method for the 3-D elasto-plastic simulation of underground excavations

The purpose of this paper is to present a simulation method for underground excavations that is more user friendly and efficient than existing methods. The immersed isogeometric Boundary Element Method is presented. Nonuniform rational B-splines (NURBS) are used for the accurate definition of complex geometries with few parameters. Immersed technology is applied to automatically generate cell meshes. This allows heterogeneous and anisotropic ground conditions as well as nonlinear material behaviour to be considered. On a practical example – that involves the elasto-plastic simulation of a borehole and where results are compared with a commercial Finite element program – the user friendliness and accuracy is demonstrated.