Important aspects in the formulation of solid-fluid debris-flow models. Part II. Constitutive modelling

Abstract

This article is the continuation of Part I: 'Thermodynamic Implications' of a article with the same title. Knowledge of the content/results of Part I, Hutter and Schneider (Continuum Mech. Thermodyn., 2009) or Schneider and Hutter (Solid-Fluid Mixtures of Frictional Materials in Geophysical and Geotechnical Context, 2009), is assumed. The intention is to see whether (i) well-known formulations of binary mixture models can be derived from the thermodynamic model, (ii) classical hypo-plasticity is deducible from the frictional evolution equation and (iii) the popular assumption of pressure equilibrium is justified. To this end, we ignore mass and volume fraction interaction rate densities, restrict considerations to isothermal processes, ignore higher order non-linearities in the constitutive relations and use the principle of phase separation. These assumptions transform the equilibrium stresses, heat flux and interaction forces to considerably simplified forms. Furthermore, the analysis shows that classical hypo-plasticity can be reconstructed with the introduction of a new objective time derivative for the stress-like variable. Non-equilibrium contributions to the stresses and interaction forces are also briefly discussed. It is, finally, shown that the assumption of pressure equilibrium precludes the application of frictional stresses in equilibrium. This unphysical assumption is, therefore, replaced by a thermodynamic closure condition that is more flexible and less restrictive. It allows for frictional stresses in thermodynamic equilibrium and, therefore, is sufficiently general for applications to mixture theories. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.