几何非线性扩展有限元法及其断裂力学应用

该文将扩展有限元方法应用到几何非线性及断裂力学问题中,并研制开发了扩展有限元Fortran程序。扩展有限元法其计算网格与不连续面相互独立,因此模拟移动的不连续面时无需对网格进行重新剖分。该文推导了几何非线性扩展有限元法的公式,在常规有限元位移模式中,基于单位分解的思想加进一个阶跃函数和二维渐近裂尖位移场,反映裂纹处位移的不连续性,并用2个水平集函数表示裂纹;采用拉格朗日描述方程建立了有限变形几何非线性扩展有限元方程;采用多点位移外推法计算裂纹应力强度因子并通过最小二乘法拟合得到更精确的结果。最后给出的大变形算例表明该文提出的几何非线性的断裂力学扩展有限元方法和相应的计算机程序是合理可行的,而且对于含裂纹及裂纹扩展的问题,扩展有限元法优于传统的有限元法。     

Evolutionary topology optimization using the extended finite element method and isolines

This study presents a new algorithm for structural topological optimization of two-dimensional continuum structures by combining the extended finite element method (X-FEM) with an evolutionary optimization algorithm. Taking advantage of an isoline design approach for boundary representation in a fixed grid domain, X-FEM can be implemented to improve the accuracy of finite element solutions on the boundary during the optimization process. Although this approach does not use any remeshing or moving mesh algorithms, final topologies have smooth and clearly defined boundaries which need no further interpretation. Numerical comparisons of the converged solutions with standard bi-directional evolutionary structural optimization solutions show the efficiency of the proposed method, and comparison with the converged solutions using MSC NASTRAN confirms the high accuracy of this method.     

Automatic mesh generation and adaptation by using contours

A general and efficient remeshing algorithm is presented for the discretization of arbitrary planar domains into triangular elements in consistency with the given node spacing function. The contour lines of the node spacing function at suitable calculated levels provide the natural lines of division of the problem domain into subregions, where finite element meshes of different element sizes are generated using the available general-purpose mesh generators.^{1, 2} Examples of remeshing for various node spacing functions are given to illustrate that high-quality gradation meshes can be generated automatically without any user's intervention by this simple contour line method.     

Fatigue crack propagation of multiple coplanar cracks with the coupled extended finite element/fast marching method

A numerical technique for modeling fatigue crack propagation of multiple coplanar cracks is presented. The proposed method couples the extended finite element method (X-FEM) [Int. J. Numer. Meth. Engng. 48 (11) (2000) 1549] to the fast marching method (FMM) [Level Set Methods & Fast Marching Methods: Evolving Interfaces in Computational Geometry, Fluid Mechanics, Computer Vision, and Materials Science, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1999]. The entire crack geometry, including one or more cracks, is represented by a single signed distance (level set) function. Merging of distinct cracks is handled naturally by the FMM with no collision detection or mesh reconstruction required. The FMM in conjunction with the Paris crack growth law is used to advance the crack front. In the X-FEM, a discontinuous function and the two-dimensional asymptotic crack-tip displacement fields are added to the finite element approximation to account for the crack using the notion of partition of unity [Comput. Meth. Appl. Mech. Engng. 139 (1996) 289]. This enables the domain to be modeled by a single fixed finite element mesh with no explicit meshing of the crack surfaces. In an earlier study [Engng. Fract. Mech. 70 (1) (2003) 29], the methodology, algorithm, and implementation for three-dimensional crack propagation of single cracks was introduced. In this paper, simulations for multiple planar cracks are presented, with crack merging and fatigue growth carried out without any user-intervention or remeshing.     

A multiscale mass scaling approach for explicit time integration using proper orthogonal decomposition

One of the main computational issues with explicit dynamics simulations is the significant reduction of the critical time step as the spatial resolution of the finite element mesh increases. In this work, a selective mass scaling approach is presented that can significantly reduce the computational cost in explicit dynamic simulations, while maintaining accuracy. The proposed method is based on a multiscale decomposition approach that separates the dynamics of the system into low (coarse scales) and high frequencies (fine scales). Here, the critical time step is increased by selectively applying mass scaling on the fine scale component only. In problems where the response is dominated by the coarse (low frequency) scales, significant increases in the stable time step can be realized. In this work, we use the proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) method to build the coarse scale space. The main idea behind POD is to obtain an optimal low‐dimensional orthogonal basis for representing an ensemble of high‐dimensional data. In our proposed method, the POD space is generated with snapshots of the solution obtained from early times of the full‐scale simulation. The example problems addressed in this work show significant improvements in computational time, without heavily compromising the accuracy of the results. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Enriched finite elements and level sets for damage tolerance assessment of complex structures

The extended finite element method (X-FEM) has recently emerged as an alternative to meshing/remeshing crack surfaces in computational fracture mechanics thanks to the concept of discontinuous and asymptotic partition of unity enrichment (PUM) of the standard finite element approximation spaces. Level set methods have been recently coupled with X-FEM to help track the crack geometry as it grows. However, little attention has been devoted to employing the X-FEM in real-world cases. This paper describes how X-FEM coupled with level set methods can be used to solve complex three-dimensional industrial fracture mechanics problems through combination of an object-oriented (C++) research code and a commercial solid modeling/finite element package (EDS-PLM/I-DEAS^®). The paper briefly describes how object-oriented programming shows its advantages to efficiently implement the proposed methodology. Due to enrichment, the latter method allows for multiple crack growth scenarios to be analyzed with a minimal amount of remeshing. Additionally, the whole component contributes to the stiffness during the whole crack growth simulation. The use of level set methods permits the seamless merging of cracks with boundaries. To show the flexibility of the method, the latter is applied to damage tolerance analysis of a complex aircraft component.     

An adaptive remeshing procedure for discontinuous finite element limit analysis

An adaptive remeshing procedure is proposed for discontinuous finite element limit analysis. The procedure proceeds by iteratively adjusting the element sizes in the mesh to distribute local errors uniformly over the domain. To facilitate the redefinition of element sizes in the new mesh, the interelements discontinuous field of elemental bound gaps is converted into a continuous field, ie, the intensity of bound gap, using a patch‐based approximation technique. An analogous technique is subsequently used for the approximation of element sizes in the old mesh. With these information, an optimized distribution of element sizes in the new mesh is defined and then scaled to match the total number of elements specified for each iteration in the adaptive remeshing process. Finally, a new mesh is generated using the advancing front technique. This adaptive remeshing procedure is repeated several times until an optimal mesh is found. Additionally, for problems involving discontinuous boundary loads, a novel algorithm for the generation of fan‐type meshes around singular points is proposed explicitly and incorporated into the main adaptive remeshing procedure. To demonstrate the feasibility of our proposed method, some classical examples extracted from the existing literary works are studied in detail.     

A three dimensional immersed smoothed finite element method (3D IS-FEM) for fluid–structure interaction problems

A three-dimensional immersed smoothed finite element method (3D IS-FEM) using four-node tetrahedral element is proposed to solve 3D fluid–structure interaction (FSI) problems. The 3D IS-FEM is able to determine accurately the physical deformation of the nonlinear solids placed within the incompressible viscous fluid governed by Navier-Stokes equations. The method employs the semi-implicit characteristic-based split scheme to solve the fluid flows and smoothed finite element methods to calculate the transient dynamics responses of the nonlinear solids based on explicit time integration. To impose the FSI conditions, a novel, effective and sufficiently general technique via simple linear interpolation is presented based on Lagrangian fictitious fluid meshes coinciding with the moving and deforming solid meshes. In the comparisons to the referenced works including experiments, it is clear that the proposed 3D IS-FEM ensures stability of the scheme with the second order spatial convergence property; and the IS-FEM is fairly independent of a wide range of mesh size ratio.     

Automatic monitoring of element shape quality in 2-D and 3-D computational mesh dynamics

One of the major problems in fluid–structure interaction using the arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian approach lies in the area of dynamic mesh generation. For accurate fluid-dynamic computations, meshes must be generated at each time step. The fluid mesh must be regenerated in the deformed fluid domain in order to account for the displacements of the elastic body computed by the structural dynamics solver. In the elasticity-based computational dynamic mesh procedure, the fluid mesh is modeled as a pseudo-elastic solid the deformation of which is based on the displacement boundary conditions, resulting from the solution of the computational structural dynamics problem. This approach has a distinct advantage over other mesh-movement algorithms in that it is a very general, physically based approach that can be applied to both structured and unstructured meshes. The major drawback of the linear elastostatic solver is that it does not guarantee the absence of severe element distortion. This paper describes a novel mesh-movement procedure for mesh quality control of 2-D and 3-D dynamic meshes based on solving a pseudo-nonlinear elastostatic problem. An inexpensive distortion measure for different types of elements is introduced and used for controlling the element shape quality. The mesh-movement procedure is illustrated with several examples (large-displacement and free-boundary problems) that highlight its advantages in terms of performance, mesh quality, and robustness. It is believed that the resulting scheme will result in a more economical simulation of the motion of complex geometry, 3-D elastic bodies immersed in temporally and spatially evolving flows. Received 20 April 2000     

Investigations on boundary temperature control analysis considering a moving body based on the adjoint variable and the fictitious domain finite element methods

This paper presents an examination of moving‐boundary temperature control problems. With a moving‐boundary problem, a finite‐element mesh is generated at each time step to express the position of the boundary. On the other hand, if an overlapped domain, that is, comprising foreground and background meshes, is prepared, the moving boundary problem can be solved without mesh generation at each time step by using the fictitious domain method. In this study, boundary temperature control problems with a moving boundary are formulated using the finite element, the adjoint variable, and the fictitious domain methods, and several numerical experiments are carried out. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于基面力概念的余能原理任意网格有限元方法

利用基面力概念,给出一种任意形状网格都可以使用的柔度矩阵表达式的具体形式,运用拉格朗日乘子法得到以基面力为基本未知量的余能原理有限元支配方程,提出计算节点位移的表达式,编制出相应的任意网格有限元计算程序。该文对不同形状的单元网格以及畸变网格进行了计算分析,并与理论解和传统的有限元进行了对比和讨论。结果表明:该方法可以适用于任意形状的有限元网格,对网格的畸变不敏感。     

Solidification in castings by finite element method

Abstract

A self-contained CAD (computer aided design) system capable of analyzing foundry casting processes in sand and gravity dies is being developed at the University College of Swansea. The work involves preprocessing, postprocessing, and a finite element code with some novel numerical techniques. The solidification of castings is a heat transfer problem involving phase change, which may occur in a narrow range of temperatures. To simulate the phenomena accurately, very fine meshes must be used and the solution of such a system becomes very expensive. In the Swansea system, an adaptive remeshing technique is introduced, which tracks the moving front of the phase change zone. At every time step, a scan is made to determine the points at which phase change is occurring, so that the remeshing may be done to produce a refined mesh at such points. The computing process is then continued. Examples have illustrated that the method is efficient and accurate. In addition, an interfacial heat transfer model is introduced to improve the simulation of the casting process. Advective heat transfer in the liquid is also modelled.

MST/1041     

Stability of an explicit multi-time step integration algorithm for linear structural dynamics equations

A proof of stability is developed for an explicit multi-time step integration method of the second order differential equations which result from a semidiscretization of the equations of structural dynamics. The proof is applicable to an algorithm that partitions the mesh into subdomains according to nodal groups which are updated with different time steps. The stability of the algorithm is demonstrated by showing that the eigenvalues of the amplification matrices lie within the unit circle and that a pseudo-energy remains constant. Bounds on the stable time steps for the nodal partitions are developed in terms of element frequencies.     

Elastic crack growth in finite elements with minimal remeshing

A minimal remeshing finite element method for crack growth is presented. Discontinuous enrichment functions are added to the finite element approximation to account for the presence of the crack. This method allows the crack to be arbitrarily aligned within the mesh. For severely curved cracks, remeshing may be needed but only away from the crack tip where remeshing is much easier. Results are presented for a wide range of two‐dimensional crack problems showing excellent accuracy. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Automatic Meshing and Remeshing in the Simultaneous Engineering Context

This paper presents a method to integrate in a better way the finite element method in the CAD/CAM process for two-dimensional problems, through efficient and automatic meshing and remeshing procedures. During the design step, the lack of integration between geometric modeling and numerical analysis remains a crucial problem and it still tends to restrain the use of finite element methods to a small number of engineers. Here we tackle the problem of the automatic remeshing of an object in the context of minor changes in its geometry and topology without restarting the mesh generation from the beginning. We have developed a mesh generator that is able to adapt a previous mesh, through two complementary strategies (for 2D cases) to a new geometry without destroying the whole initial discretization. We also present the possible extension of these concepts to three-dimensional problems.     

Explicit Reproducing Kernel Particle Methods for large deformation problems

The explicit Reproducing Kernel Particle Method (RKPM) is presented and applied to the simulations of large deformation problems. RKPM is a meshless method which does not need a mesh structure in its formulation. Because of this mesh-free property, RKPM is able to simulate large deformation problems without remeshing which is often required for the mesh-based methods such as the finite element method. The RKPM shape function and its derivatives are constructed by imposing the consistency conditions. An efficient treatment of essential boundary conditions is also proposed for explicit time integration. The Lagrangian method based on the reference configuration is employed for the RKPM simulation of large deformation problems. Several examples of non-linear elastic materials are solved to demonstrate the performance of the method. The numerical experiment for the problem of underwater bubble explosion is also performed using the explicit Lagrangian RKPM formulation. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A locally anisotropic fluid–structure interaction remeshing strategy for thin structures with application to a hinged rigid leaflet

An immersed finite element fluid–structure interaction algorithm with an anisotropic remeshing strategy for thin rigid structures is presented in two dimensions. One specific feature of the algorithm consists of remeshing only the fluid elements that are cut by the solid such that they fit the solid geometry. This approach allows to keep the initial (given) fluid mesh during the entire simulation while remeshing is performed locally. Furthermore, constraints between the fluid and the solid may be directly enforced with both an essential treatment and elements allowing the stress to be discontinuous across the structure. Remeshed elements may be strongly anisotropic. Classical interpolation schemes – inf–sup stable on isotropic meshes – may be unstable on anisotropic ones. We specifically focus on a proper finite element pair choice. As for the time advancing of the fluid–structure interaction solver, we perform a geometrical linearization with a sequential solution of fluid and structure in a backward Euler framework. Using the proposed methodology, we extensively address the motion of a hinged rigid leaflet. Numerical tests demonstrate that some finite element pairs are inf–sup unstable with our algorithm, in particular with a discontinuous pressure. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A stable interface-enriched formulation for immersed domains with strong enforcement of essential boundary conditions

Generating matching meshes for finite element analysis is not always a convenient choice, for instance, in cases where the location of the boundary is not known a priori or when the boundary has a complex shape. In such cases, enriched finite element methods can be used to describe the geometric features independently from the mesh. The Discontinuity-Enriched Finite Element Method (DE-FEM) was recently proposed for solving problems with both weak and strong discontinuities within the computational domain. In this paper, we extend DE-FEM to treat fictitious domain problems, where the mesh-independent boundaries might either describe a discontinuity within the object, or the boundary of the object itself. These boundaries might be given by an explicit expression or an implicit level set. We demonstrate the main assets of DE-FEM as an immersed method by means of a number of numerical examples; we show that the method is not only stable and optimally convergent but, most importantly, that essential boundary conditions can be prescribed strongly.     

A faster and accurate explicit algorithm for quasi‐harmonic dynamic problems

It is known that the explicit time integration is conditionally stable. The very small time step leads to increase of computational time dramatically. In this paper, a mass‐redistributed method is formulated in different numerical schemes to simulate transient quasi‐harmonic problems. The essential idea of the mass‐redistributed method is to shift the integration points away from the Gauss locations in the computation of mass matrix for achieving a much larger stable time increment in the explicit method. For the first time, it is found that the stability of explicit method in transient quasi‐harmonic problems is proportional to the softened effect of discretized model with mass‐redistributed method. With adjustment of integration points in the mass matrix, the stability of transient models is improved significantly. Numerical experiments including 1D, 2D and 3D problems with regular and irregular mesh have demonstrated the superior performance of the proposed mass‐redistributed method with the combination of smoothed finite element method in terms of accuracy as well as stability. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.