STRUCTURAL DYNAMIC ANALYSIS BY A TIME-DISCONTINUOUS GALERKIN FINITE ELEMENT METHOD

This paper studies a time-discontinuous Galerkin finite element method for structural dynamic problems, by which both displacements and velocities are approximated as piecewise linear functions in the time domain and may be discontinuous at the discrete time levels. A new iterative solution algorithm which involves only one factorization for each fixed time step size and a few iterations at each step is presented for solving the resulted system of coupled equations. By using the jumps of the displacements and the velocities in the total energy norm as error indicators, an adaptive time-stepping procedure for selecting the proper time step size is described. Numerical examples including both single-DOF and multi-DOF problems are used to illustrate the performance of these algorithms. Comparisons with the exact results and/or the results by the Newmark integration scheme are given. It is shown that the time-discontinuous Galerkin finite element method discussed in this study possesses good accuracy (third order) and stability properties, its numerical implementation is not difficult, and the higher computational cost needed in each time step is compensated by use of a larger time step size.     

地下隧道工程地震动分析的有限元－人工透射边界方法

采用有限元－人工透射边界方法计算了含有地下隧道工程的地基在ＳＨ波和瑞利波作用下的地震动反应，讨论了各自不同的地震动特性。并通过与边界积分方法比较，验证了有限元—人工透射边界方法对解决此类问题的有效性。     

结构区间有限元方程组的一种解法

针对结构静力区间有限元方程组的求解提出了一种简易解法。该法将含区间变量的整体刚度矩阵在区间变量的中值处进行一阶泰勒式展开。在对刚度矩阵展开式进行近似处理之后,将刚度矩阵的逆矩阵用一系列的Neumann展开级数来表示。为减小区间运算的扩张,利用区间乘法运算的次分配律和相关运算规则,导出不确定结构响应量上界、下界的计算式。几个算例结果分析表明:该方法具有较好的精度,是可行和有效的,且易于编程实施。     

A PARTICLE TRACKING TECHNIQUE FOR THE LAGRANGIAN–EULERIAN FINITE ELEMENT METHOD IN MULTI-DIMENSIONS

This paper presents a multi-dimensional particle tracking technique for applying the Lagrangian–Eulerian finite element method to solve transport equations in transient-state simulations. In the Lagrangian– Eulerian approach, the advection term is handled in the Lagrangian step so that the associated numerical errors can be considerably reduced. It is important to have an adequate particle tracking technique for computing advection accurately in the Lagrangian step. The particle tracking technique presented here is designed to trace fictitious particles in the real-world flow field where the flow velocity is either measured or computed at a limited number of locations. The technique, named ‘in-element’ particle tracking, traces fictitious particles on an element-by-element basis. Given a velocity field, a fictitious particle is traced one element by one element until either a boundary is encountered or the available time is completely consumed. For the tracking within an element, the element is divided into a desired number of subelements with the interpolated velocity computed at all nodes of the subelements. A fictitious particle, thus, is traced one subelement by one subelement within the element. The desired number of subelements can be determined based on the complexity of the flow field being considered. The more complicated the flow field is, the more subelements are needed to achieve accurate particle tracking results. A single-velocity approach can be used to efficiently perform particle tracking in a smooth flow field, while an average-velocity approach can be employed to increase the tracking accuracy for more complex flow fields.     

HYPERSINGULAR RESIDUALS—A NEW APPROACH FOR ERROR ESTIMATION IN THE BOUNDARY ELEMENT METHOD

This paper presents a new approach for a posteriori ‘pointwise’ error estimation in the boundary element method. The estimator relies upon evaluation of the residual of hypersingular integral equations, and is therefore intrinsic to the boundary integral equation approach. A methodology is developed for approximating the error on the boundary as well as in the interior of the domain. Extensive computational experiments have been performed for the two-dimensional Laplace equation and the numerical results indicate that the error estimates successfully track the form of the exact error curve. Moreover, a reasonable estimate of the magnitude of the actual error is also predicted.     

A MODEL STUDY OF THE QUALITY OF A POSTERIORI ERROR ESTIMATORS FOR FINITE ELEMENT SOLUTIONS OF LINEAR ELLIPTIC PROBLEMS,WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO THE BEHAVIOR NEAR THE BOUNDARY

In References 1–3 we presented a computer-based theory for analysing the asymptotic accuracy (quality of robustness) of error estimators for mesh-patches in the interior of the domain. In this paper we review the approach employed in References 1–3 and extend it to analyse the asymptotic quality of error estimators for mesh-patches at or near a domain boundary. We analyse two error estimators which were found in References 1–3 to be robust in the interior of the mesh (the element residual with p-order equilibrated fluxes and (p+1)) degree bubble solution or (p+1) degree polynomial solution (ERpB or ERpPp+1; see References 1–3) and the Zienkiewicz–Zhu Superconvergent Patch Recovery (ZZ-SPR; see References 4–7) and we show that the robustness of these estimators for elements adjacent to the boundary can be significantly inferior to their robustness for interior elements. This deterioration is due to the difference in the definition of the estimators for the elements in the interior of the mesh and the elements adjacent to the boundary. In order to demonstrate how our approach can be employed to determine the most robust version of an estimator we analysed the versions of the ZZ estimator proposed in References 9–12. We found that the original ZZ-SPR proposed in References 4–7 is the most robust one, among the various versions tested, and some of the proposed ‘enhancements’ can lead to a significant deterioration of the asymptotic robustness of the estimator. From the analyses given in References 1–3 and in this paper, we found that the original ZZ estimator (given in References 4–7) is the most robust among all estimators analysed in References 1–3 and in this study. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.