Monolithic coupling of the implicit material point method with the finite element method

A monolithic coupling between the material point method (MPM) and the finite element method (FEM) is presented. The MPM formulation described is implicit, and the exchange of information between particles and background grid is minimized. The reduced information transfer from the particles to the grid improves the stability of the method. Once the residual is assembled, the system matrix is obtained by means of automatic differentiation. In such a way, no explicit computation is required and the implementation is considerably simplified. When MPM is coupled with FEM, the MPM background grid is attached to the FEM body and the coupling is monolithic. With this strategy, no MPM particle can penetrate a FEM element, and the need for computationally expensive contact search algorithms used by existing coupling procedures is eliminated. The coupled system can be assembled with a single assembly procedure carried out element by element in a FEM fashion. Numerical results are reported to display the performances and advantages of the methods here discussed.