BEM applied to damage phenomena in saturated porous media

This paper deals with the numerical analysis of saturated porous media, taking into account the degradation process of the solid skeleton. An implicit boundary element method (BEM) formulation, based on time-independent fundamental solutions, is developed and implemented to couple the fluid flow and the two-dimensional elastostatics problems. The Biot's poro-elastic theory is used and the elastic behavior of the skeleton is coupled to damage. A scalar damage model is assumed for this analysis. The non-linear problem is solved by a Newton-Raphson procedure. A numerical example is presented, in order to validate the implemented formulation and to illustrate its efficiency regarding the accuracy of the results and the robustness of the numerical algorithm.