A new plasticity bond damage model for highly porous, soft rocks is proposed and implemented as a contact model in the discrete element method DEM. The Particle upscaling law for strength, softening, and far-field interaction parameters are presented and validated in Zheng & Ciantia (2025) enabling computational efficiency. Also, a strength correction equation is developed in Zheng & Ciantia (2025) to consider sample size effect of rocks. Finally, for boundary value problems like pile installation, the computational improvement of the model led pile penetration simulations in porous, soft rocks for the first time conducted in Zheng & Ciantia (2025).

Keywords

• DEM
• Discrete Element Model
• soft rocks
• chalk
• porous
• soil/structure interaction

References

Zheng J & Ciantia MO (2025) An Efficient Damage‑Plasticity DEM Contact Model for Highly Porous Rocks. Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering. (Accepted)