Simulation of unconfined seepage in soil–rock mixture slope by virtual element method

Abstract

The virtual element method (VEM) is commonly used in engineering due to its ability to solve arbitrary node meshes. In this study, we propose a method to determine the free surface of the unconfined seepage problem in soil–rock mixtures slope using the advantages of the VEM. By cutting meshes in the iteration, our method overcomes the limitation of fixed mesh in solving the free surface, and the numerical tests confirm the accuracy of the proposed method in predicting the location of the seepage surface. Moreover, the results demonstrate that the presence of rock blocks significantly impacts the unconfined seepage behavior of soil–rock mixtures slope, revealing the importance of considering rock blocks in the analysis of such systems.