A moving superimposed finite element method for structural topology optimization

Level set methods are becoming an attractive design tool in shape and topology optimization for obtaining efficient and lighter structures. In this paper, a dynamic implicit boundary‐based moving superimposed finite element method (s‐version FEM or S‐FEM) is developed for structural topology optimization using the level set methods, in which the variational interior and exterior boundaries are represented by the zero level set. Both a global mesh and an overlaying local mesh are integrated into the moving S‐FEM analysis model. A relatively coarse fixed Eulerian mesh consisting of bilinear rectangular elements is used as a global mesh. The local mesh consisting of flexible linear triangular elements is constructed to match the dynamic implicit boundary captured from nodal values of the implicit level set function. In numerical integration using the Gauss quadrature rule, the practical difficulty due to the discontinuities is overcome by the coincidence of the global and local meshes. A double mapping technique is developed to perform the numerical integration for the global and coupling matrices of the overlapped elements with two different co‐ordinate systems. An element killing strategy is presented to reduce the total number of degrees of freedom to improve the computational efficiency. A simple constraint handling approach is proposed to perform minimum compliance design with a volume constraint. A physically meaningful and numerically efficient velocity extension method is developed to avoid the complicated PDE solving procedure. The proposed moving S‐FEM is applied to structural topology optimization using the level set methods as an effective tool for the numerical analysis of the linear elasticity topology optimization problems. For the classical elasticity problems in the literature, the present S‐FEM can achieve numerical results in good agreement with those from the theoretical solutions and/or numerical results from the standard FEM. For the minimum compliance topology optimization problems in structural optimization, the present approach significantly outperforms the well‐recognized ‘ersatz material’ approach as expected in the accuracy of the strain field, numerical stability, and representation fidelity at the expense of increased computational time. It is also shown that the present approach is able to produce structures near the theoretical optimum. It is suggested that the present S‐FEM can be a promising tool for shape and topology optimization using the level set methods. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A universal measure of the conformity of a mesh with respect to an anisotropic metric field

In this paper, a method is presented to measure the non‐conformity of a mesh with respect to a size specification map given in the form of a Riemannian metric. The measure evaluates the difference between the metric tensor of a simplex of the mesh and the metric tensor specified on the size specification map. This measure is universal because it is a unique, dimensionless number which characterizes either a single simplex of a mesh or a whole mesh, both in size and in shape, be it isotropic or anisotropic, coarse or fine, in a small or a big domain, in two or three dimensions. This measure is important because it can compare any two meshes in order to determine unequivocally which of them is better. Analytical and numerical examples illustrate the behaviour of this measure. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A cut‐cell non‐conforming Cartesian mesh method for compressible and incompressible flow

This paper details a multigrid‐accelerated cut‐cell non‐conforming Cartesian mesh methodology for the modelling of inviscid compressible and incompressible flow. This is done via a single equation set that describes sub‐, trans‐, and supersonic flows. Cut‐cell technology is developed to furnish body‐fitted meshes with an overlapping mesh as starting point, and in a manner which is insensitive to surface definition inconsistencies. Spatial discretization is effected via an edge‐based vertex‐centred finite volume method. An alternative dual‐mesh construction strategy, similar to the cell‐centred method, is developed. Incompressibility is dealt with via an artificial compressibility algorithm, and stabilization achieved with artificial dissipation. In compressible flow, shocks are captured via pressure switch‐activated upwinding. The solution process is accelerated with full approximation storage (FAS) multigrid where coarse meshes are generated automatically via a volume agglomeration methodology. This is the first time that the proposed discretization and solution methods are employed to solve a single compressible–incompressible equation set on cut‐cell Cartesian meshes. The developed technology is validated by numerical experiments. The standard discretization and alternative methods were found equivalent in accuracy and computational cost. The multigrid implementation achieved decreases in CPU time of up to one order of magnitude. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Global–Local Numerical Model for the Prediction of Impact Induced Damage in Composite Laminates

Delamination and other damage mechanisms, such as matrix cracks, fibre-matrix debonding and fiber failure can appear as a consequence of impact events with foreign objects under in service conditions and maintenance operations. These phenomena are seldom analyzed together without discussing how the interferences between the different damage mechanisms can influence their evolution under different loading conditions. The present work is focused on the development of a specific numerical procedure, able to take into account the failure modes interaction in composite laminated structures subject to a low velocity impact. As a matter of fact, a very fine mesh refinement is required to correctly evaluate the stress state where the impact induced damage onsets. Hence, in order to reduce the computational cost without compromising the accuracy of results, a global/local approach, characterized by a very refined mesh in the critical impact region interacting with a coarser mesh in the rest of the geometrical domain, has been implemented in the FE model. In the present work, Multi-Point-Constraints (MPC) has been used to link the refined local domain to the coarse global domain without using transition meshes. The implementation and the analyses have been performed in the ABAQUS® FE environment.     

A multi‐level adaptive mesh refinement method for level set simulations of multiphase flow on unstructured meshes

An adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) technique is proposed for level set simulations of incompressible multiphase flows. The present AMR technique is implemented for two‐dimensional/three‐dimensional unstructured meshes and extended to multi‐level refinement. Smooth variation of the element size is guaranteed near the interface region with the use of multi‐level refinement. A Courant–Friedrich–Lewy condition for zone adaption frequency is newly introduced to obtain a mass‐conservative solution of incompressible multiphase flows. Finite elements around the interface are dynamically refined using the classical element subdivision method. Accordingly, finite element method is employed to solve the problems governed by the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations, using the level set method for dynamically updated meshes. The accuracy of the adaptive solutions is found to be comparable with that of non‐adaptive solutions only if a similar mesh resolution near the interface is provided. Because of the substantial reduction in the total number of nodes, the adaptive simulations with two‐level refinement used to solve the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations with a free surface are about four times faster than the non‐adaptive ones. Further, the overhead of the present AMR procedure is found to be very small, as compared with the total CPU time for an adaptive simulation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive mesh refinement applied to the scalar transported PDF equation in a turbulent jet

This paper describes a novel solution method for the transported probability density function (PDF) equation for scalars (compositions). In contrast to conventional solution methods based on the Monte Carlo approach, we use a finite‐volume method combined with adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) applied in both physical and compositional space. The obvious advantage of this over a uniform grid is that fine meshes are only used where the solution requires high resolution. The efficiency of the method is demonstrated by a number of tests involving a turbulent jet flow with up to two scalars (both reacting and non‐reacting). We find that the AMR calculation can be at a fraction of the computer cost of a uniform grid calculation with the same accuracy. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Universal meshes: A method for triangulating planar curved domains immersed in nonconforming meshes

We introduce a new method to triangulate planar, curved domains that transforms a specific collection of triangles in a background mesh to conform to the boundary. In the process, no new vertices are introduced, and connectivities of triangles are left unaltered. The method relies on a novel way of parameterizing an immersed boundary over a collection of nearby edges with its closest point projection. To guarantee its robustness, we require that the domain be C²‐regular, the background mesh be sufficiently refined near the boundary, and that specific angles in triangles near the boundary be strictly acute. The method can render both straight‐edged and curvilinear triangulations for the immersed domain. The latter includes curved triangles that conform exactly to the immersed boundary, and ones constructed with isoparametric mappings to interpolate the boundary at select points. High‐order finite elements constructed over these curved triangles achieve optimal accuracy, which has customarily proven difficult in numerical schemes that adopt nonconforming meshes. Aside from serving as a quick and simple tool for meshing planar curved domains with complex shapes, the method provides significant advantages for simulating problems with moving boundaries and in numerical schemes that require iterating over the geometry of domains. With no conformity requirements, the same background mesh can be adopted to triangulate a large family of domains immersed in it, including ones realized over several updates during the coarse of simulating problems with moving boundaries. We term such a background mesh as a universal mesh for the family of domains it can be used to triangulate. Universal meshes hence facilitate a framework for finite element calculations over evolving domains while using only fixed background meshes. Furthermore, because the evolving geometry can be approximated with any desired order, numerical solutions can be computed with high‐order accuracy. We present demonstrative examples using universal meshes to simulate the interaction of rigid bodies with Stokesian fluids. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multigrid solver with automatic mesh refinement for transient elastoplastic dynamic problems

This paper presents an adaptive refinement strategy based on a hierarchical element subdivision dedicated to modelling elastoplastic materials in transient dynamics. At each time step, the refinement is automatic and starts with the calculation of the solution on a coarse mesh. Then, an error indicator is used to control the accuracy of the solution and a finer localized mesh is created where the user‐prescribed accuracy is not reached. A new calculation is performed on this new mesh using the non‐linear ‘Full Approximation Scheme’ multigrid strategy. Applying the error indicator and the refinement strategy recursively, the optimal mesh is obtained. This mesh verifies the error indicator on the whole structure. The multigrid strategy is used for two purposes. First, it optimizes the computational cost of the solution on the finest localized mesh. Second, it ensures information transfer among the different hierarchical meshes. A standard time integration scheme is used and the mesh is reassessed at each time step. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive atomistic‐to‐continuum modeling of propagating defects

An adaptive atomistic‐to‐continuum method is presented for modeling the propagation of material defects. This method extends the bridging domain method to allow the atomic domain to dynamically conform to the evolving defect regions during a simulation, without introducing spurious oscillations and without requiring mesh refinement. The atomic domain expands as defects approach the bridging domain method coupling domain by fine graining nearby finite elements into equivalent atomistic subdomains. Additional algorithms coarse grain portions of the atomic domain to the continuum scale, reducing the degrees of freedom, when the atomic displacements in a subdomain can be approximated by FEM or extended FEM elements to within a certain homogeneity tolerance. The extended FEM approximations are created by fitting the broken inter‐atomic bonds of fractured surfaces and dislocation slip planes. Because atomic degrees of freedom are maintained only where needed for each timestep, the solution retains the advantages of multiscale modeling, with a reduced computational cost compared with other multiscale methods. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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.     

Local Grid Refinement in Large-Eddy Simulation

A method for performing nested-grid calculations with a Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) code is described. The grid consists of a coarse mesh and a fine mesh which overlaps the coarse in some region. A standard finite-volume method is used on both meshes. By means of grid communication, the velocity and pressure at both meshes are matched. To check that large eddies which are already resolved on the coarse grid are not affected by the nesting procedure, a simple two-dimensional mixing layer is simulated. Several simulations of this flow have been carried out with a different number of grid points on the nested grid. It is found that, without much extra computational effort, the grid-nesting improves the turbulent statistics with respect to the results found on the coarse mesh. This improvement occurs first of all in the region where grid refinement is applied, but better results are also found on the coarse mesh outside the grid-refinement region. Furthermore, it is shown that the large-scale structures in this flow are not influenced by the boundary between the coarse and fine grid.     

Significance of the elastic peak stress evaluated by FE analyses at the point of singularity of sharp V-notched components

The paper presents an expression useful to estimate the notch stress intensity factor (NSIF) from finite element analyses carried out by using a mesh pattern with a constant element size. The evaluation of the NSIF from a numerical analysis of the local stress field usually requires very refined meshes and then large computational effort. The usefulness of the presented expression is that (i) only the elastic peak stress numerically evaluated at the V‐notch tip is needed and no longer the whole stress–distance set of data; (ii) the adopted meshes are rather coarse if compared to those necessary for the evaluation of the whole local stress field. The proposed expression needs the evaluation of a virtual V‐notch tip radius, i.e. the radius which would produce the same elastic peak stress than that calculated by FEM at the sharp V‐notch tip by means of a given mesh pattern. Once such a radius has been theoretically determined for a given geometry, the expression can be applied in a wide range of notch depths and opening angles.     

An adaptive MsFEM for nonperiodic viscoelastic composites

We present a modification of the multiscale finite element method (MsFEM) for modeling of heterogeneous viscoelastic materials and an enhancement of this method by the adaptive generation of both meshes, ie, a macroscale coarse one and a microscale fine one. The fine mesh refinements are performed independently within coarse elements adjusting the microscale discretization to the microstructure, whereas the coarse mesh adaptation optimizes the macroscale approximation. Besides the coupling of the hp‐adaptive finite element method with the MsFEM we propose a modification of the MsFEM to accommodate for the analysis of transient nonlinear problems. We illustrate the efficiency and accuracy of the new approach for a number of benchmark examples, including the modeling of functionally graded material, and demonstrate the potential of our improvement for upscaling nonperiodic and nonlinear composites.     

Three‐dimensional grayscale‐free topology optimization using a level‐set based r‐refinement method

In this paper, we propose a three‐dimensional (3D) grayscale‐free topology optimization method using a conforming mesh to the structural boundary, which is represented by the level‐set method. The conforming mesh is generated in an r‐refinement manner; that is, it is generated by moving the nodes of the Eulerian mesh that maintains the level‐set function. Although the r‐refinement approach for the conforming mesh generation has many benefits from an implementation aspect, it has been considered as a difficult task to stably generate 3D conforming meshes in the r‐refinement manner. To resolve this task, we propose a new level‐set based r‐refinement method. Its main novelty is a procedure for minimizing the number of the collapsed elements whose nodes are moved to the structural boundary in the conforming mesh; in addition, we propose a new procedure for improving the quality of the conforming mesh, which is inspired by Laplacian smoothing. Because of these novelties, the proposed r‐refinement method can generate 3D conforming meshes at a satisfactory level, and 3D grayscale‐free topology optimization is realized. The usefulness of the proposed 3D grayscale‐free topology optimization method is confirmed through several numerical examples. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Variational generation of prismatic boundary‐layer meshes for biomedical computing

Boundary‐layer meshes are important for numerical simulations in computational fluid dynamics, including computational biofluid dynamics of air flow in lungs and blood flow in hearts. Generating boundary‐layer meshes is challenging for complex biological geometries. In this paper, we propose a novel technique for generating prismatic boundary‐layer meshes for such complex geometries. Our method computes a feature size of the geometry, adapts the surface mesh based on the feature size, and then generates the prismatic layers by propagating the triangulated surface using the face‐offsetting method. We derive a new variational method to optimize the prismatic layers to improve the triangle shapes and edge orthogonality of the prismatic elements and also introduce simple and effective measures to guarantee the validity of the mesh. Coupled with a high‐quality tetrahedral mesh generator for the interior of the domain, our method generates high‐quality hybrid meshes for accurate and efficient numerical simulations. We present comparative study to demonstrate the robustness and quality of our method for complex biomedical geometries. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive moving mesh level set method for structure topology optimization

The level set method is a promising approach to provide flexibility in dealing with topological changes during structural optimization. Normally, the level set surface, which depicts a structure's topology by a level contour set of a continuous scalar function embedded in space, is interpolated on a fixed mesh. The accuracy of the boundary positions is therefore largely dependent on the mesh density, a characteristic of any Eulerian expression when using a fixed mesh. This article combines the adaptive moving mesh method with a level set structure topology optimization method. The finite element mesh automatically maintains a high nodal density around the structural boundaries of the material domain, whereas the mesh topology remains unchanged. Numerical experiments demonstrate the effect of the combination of a Lagrangian expression for a moving mesh and a Eulerian expression for capturing the moving boundaries.     

A multigrid method for the generalized symmetric eigenvalue problem: Part I—algorithm and implementation

A multigrid method is described that can solve the generalized eigenvalue problem encountered in structural dynamics. The algorithm combines relaxation on a fine mesh with the solution of a singular equation on a coarse mesh. A sequence of coarser meshes may be used to quickly solve this singular equation using another multigrid method. The hierarchy of increasingly finer meshes can be further exploited using a nested iteration scheme, whereby initial approximations to the fine mesh eigenvectors are computed using interpolated coarse mesh eigenvectors. The solution of some simple plate problems on a Convex C240 demonstrates the efficiency of a vectorized version of the multigrid algorithm.     

Adaptive moving mesh methods for simulating one‐dimensional groundwater problems with sharp moving fronts

Accurate modelling of groundwater flow and transport with sharp moving fronts often involves high computational cost, when a fixed/uniform mesh is used. In this paper, we investigate the modelling of groundwater problems using a particular adaptive mesh method called the moving mesh partial differential equation approach. With this approach, the mesh is dynamically relocated through a partial differential equation to capture the evolving sharp fronts with a relatively small number of grid points. The mesh movement and physical system modelling are realized by solving the mesh movement and physical partial differential equations alternately. The method is applied to the modelling of a range of groundwater problems, including advection dominated chemical transport and reaction, non‐linear infiltration in soil, and the coupling of density dependent flow and transport. Numerical results demonstrate that sharp moving fronts can be accurately and efficiently captured by the moving mesh approach. Also addressed are important implementation strategies, e.g. the construction of the monitor function based on the interpolation error, control of mesh concentration, and two‐layer mesh movement. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A parallel implicit/explicit hybrid time domain method for computational electromagnetics

The numerical solution of Maxwell's curl equations in the time domain is achieved by combining an unstructured mesh finite element algorithm with a cartesian finite difference method. The practical problem area selected to illustrate the application of the approach is the simulation of three‐dimensional electromagnetic wave scattering. The scattering obstacle and the free space region immediately adjacent to it are discretized using an unstructured mesh of linear tetrahedral elements. The remainder of the computational domain is filled with a regular cartesian mesh. These two meshes are overlapped to create a hybrid mesh for the numerical solution. On the cartesian mesh, an explicit finite difference method is adopted and an implicit/explicit finite element formulation is employed on the unstructured mesh. This approach ensures that computational efficiency is maintained if, for any reason, the generated unstructured mesh contains elements of a size much smaller than that required for accurate wave propagation. A perfectly matched layer is added at the artificial far field boundary, created by the truncation of the physical domain prior to the numerical solution. The complete solution approach is parallelized, to enable large‐scale simulations to be effectively performed. Examples are included to demonstrate the numerical performance that can be achieved. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.