A microcomputer solution of Biot's two‐dimensional consolidation theory

Abstract

The implementation of the finite element solution of Biot's consolidation theory on a low‐cost microcomputer is described. A two‐dimensional linear elastic model is solved using bilinear rectangular elements and a fully implicit timestepping algorithm. The machine used is the Acorn Computers model B, BBC microcomputer, a popular low‐cost engineering applications machine. The program is written in Basic but to increase speed of computation certain sections of the solution procedure involving matrix manipulation are written in Assembly language. The results obtained are encouraging from the point of view of accuracy, problem size and computational time. It is concluded that there is scope for the use of the present generation of low‐cost microcomputer, as typified by this machine, in the numerical solution of the more straightforward, but still realistic, consolidation problems.

Citation

Thomas, H.R. and Liu, C.H. (1986), "A microcomputer solution of Biot's two‐dimensional consolidation theory", Engineering Computations, Vol. 3 No. 2, pp. 161-166. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb023654