Award-winning paper in 2020

The Telford Premium, presented to the best paper published in Engineering and Computational Mechanics, was awarded to Bower et al., (2020).

The hardening soil (HS) model is an advanced soil plasticity model, which incorporates many features including stiffness stress dependency, hardening from initial loading and soil dilatancy. In this paper, the HS model is explored in depth and two improvements are proposed. The first is a new shear yield surface and hardening rule that have been reformulated to remove singularities. The second is a robust implicit return mapping scheme. Options for improving the global convergence of finite-element analyses are also explored. Single-elements tests replicate results from experimental triaxial data and previous versions of the HS model very closely, and at excellent convergence rates. In addition, a slope stability analysis is performed using the φ − c strength reduction method in two-dimensional plane strain. The results from the slope analysis showed good agreement with analytical and graphical slope stability methods. A three-dimensional (3D) slope stability analysis was also conducted with modified boundary conditions, in order to demonstrate the 3D capabilities of the model.

The Baker Medal, presented to the third best paper overall paper published in 2020, was awarded to Wang et al., (2020).

This paper presents a numerical investigation on the interaction between focused waves and wave energy converter (WEC) models using a hybrid solver, qaleFOAM, which couples a two-phase incompressible Navier–Stokes (NS) solver OpenFOAM/InterDyMFoam with the quasi Lagrangian–Eulerian finite element method (QALE-FEM) based on the fully non-linear potential theory (FNPT) using the domain-decomposition approach. In the qaleFOAM, the NS solver deals with a small region near the structures (NS domain), where the viscous effect may be significant; the QALE-FEM covers the remaining computational domain (FNPT domain); an overlap (transitional) zone is applied between two domains. The WEC models, mooring system and the wave conditions are given by the Collaborative Computational Project in Wave–Structure Interaction (CCP-WSI) Blind Test Series 2. In the numerical simulation, the incident wave is generated in the FNPT domain using a self-correction wavemaker and propagates into the NS domain through the coupling boundaries and attached transitional zones. An improved passive wave absorber is imposed at the outlet of the NS domain for wave absorption. The practical performance of the qaleFOAM is demonstrated by comparing its prediction with the experimental data, including the wave elevation, motion responses (surge, heave and pitch) and mooring load.