A shifted interface approach for internal discontinuities in poroelastic media

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Riley, David Michael, Scovazzi, Guglielmo, Stefanou, Ioannis
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866917415683620864
author Riley, David Michael
Scovazzi, Guglielmo
Stefanou, Ioannis
author_facet Riley, David Michael
Scovazzi, Guglielmo
Stefanou, Ioannis
contents Porous media containing cracks, fractures, or internal discontinuities arise throughout subsurface geomechanics, biomechanics, and materials science. Numerical simulation of the coupled hydromechanical response is inherently challenging because the pressure and displacement fields are tightly coupled through the Biot equations, requiring stable mixed formulations. These difficulties are compounded when cracks are present, because standard mesh-conforming approaches require costly, labor-intensive, body-fitted meshing, while unfitted methods often require cut-cell integration, enrichment functions, or additional stabilization. In this work, we use an alternative approach, we adapt the shifted interface method to coupled transient poroelasticity with embedded interfaces. The method replaces the true crack by a surrogate approximation where interface conditions are transferred through local expansions. A unified derivation yields shifted forms for both hydraulic transmission and mechanical traction coupling. Two enforcement strategies are extensively compared: a weak (integral) enforcement and a strong (pointwise) enforcement. Four test cases of increasing geometric complexity (offset mesh-aligned, boundary-intersecting angled, embedded angled, and multi-crack configurations) validate the formulation. Away from crack tips, interface residuals converge as O(h); near tips, localized post-processing artifacts degrade the global rate, but first-order convergence is recovered when a small tip region is excluded. A multi-crack demonstration with four simultaneously embedded cracks of distinct geometry and interface properties confirms the practical applicability of the framework. These results support the shifted interface method as a practical framework for poroelastic crack modeling on non-body-fitted meshes with geometrically complex embedded interfaces.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_15450
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A shifted interface approach for internal discontinuities in poroelastic media
Riley, David Michael
Scovazzi, Guglielmo
Stefanou, Ioannis
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Computational Physics
Geophysics
Porous media containing cracks, fractures, or internal discontinuities arise throughout subsurface geomechanics, biomechanics, and materials science. Numerical simulation of the coupled hydromechanical response is inherently challenging because the pressure and displacement fields are tightly coupled through the Biot equations, requiring stable mixed formulations. These difficulties are compounded when cracks are present, because standard mesh-conforming approaches require costly, labor-intensive, body-fitted meshing, while unfitted methods often require cut-cell integration, enrichment functions, or additional stabilization. In this work, we use an alternative approach, we adapt the shifted interface method to coupled transient poroelasticity with embedded interfaces. The method replaces the true crack by a surrogate approximation where interface conditions are transferred through local expansions. A unified derivation yields shifted forms for both hydraulic transmission and mechanical traction coupling. Two enforcement strategies are extensively compared: a weak (integral) enforcement and a strong (pointwise) enforcement. Four test cases of increasing geometric complexity (offset mesh-aligned, boundary-intersecting angled, embedded angled, and multi-crack configurations) validate the formulation. Away from crack tips, interface residuals converge as O(h); near tips, localized post-processing artifacts degrade the global rate, but first-order convergence is recovered when a small tip region is excluded. A multi-crack demonstration with four simultaneously embedded cracks of distinct geometry and interface properties confirms the practical applicability of the framework. These results support the shifted interface method as a practical framework for poroelastic crack modeling on non-body-fitted meshes with geometrically complex embedded interfaces.
title A shifted interface approach for internal discontinuities in poroelastic media
topic Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Computational Physics
Geophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.15450