A methodology for crack tip mesh design

A methodology for crack tip mesh design is developed which consists of comparing the mesh geometric parameters against the accuracy of the finite element solution. By successive changes in the mesh parameters a near optimal mesh can be obtained. This was done here two-dimensional linear elastic single mode problems. The direct displacement extrapolation method for stress intensity factor estimation is used.     

A near optimal crack tip mesh

The near optimal crack tip mesh obtained by the authors in a previous paper is tested for a set of problems. The accuracy is maintained within the desired values. The direct displacement extrapolation method for SIF estimation is compared to the virtual crack extension. The methodology for crack tip mesh design discussed previously is validated.     

A 20‐node hexahedron element with enhanced distortion tolerance

This paper presents a distortion resistant 20‐node hexahedron element that employs two different sets of shape functions for the trial and test functions. The formulation seeks to satisfy the continuity and completeness requirements by exploiting the intrinsic properties of these two sets of shape functions. Several test problems are used to assess the performance of the element under various mesh distortions. The ability of the proposed as well as the classical 20‐node element to maintain solution accuracy under severe mesh distortions has been studied. The proposed element exhibits a very high tolerance to mesh distortions. In particular, for problems involving linear and quadratic displacement fields, the element is capable of reproducing exact solution under all admissible geometrical distortions of the mesh. For test problems involving higher‐order displacement fields, the performance of the present element is in general better than that of the classical element. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A fast multipole boundary element method for solving two-dimensional thermoelasticity problems

A fast multipole boundary element method (BEM) for solving general uncoupled steady-state thermoelasticity problems in two dimensions is presented in this paper. The fast multipole BEM is developed to handle the thermal term in the thermoelasticity boundary integral equation involving temperature and heat flux distributions on the boundary of the problem domain. Fast multipole expansions, local expansions and related translations for the thermal term are derived using complex variables. Several numerical examples are presented to show the accuracy and effectiveness of the developed fast multipole BEM in calculating the displacement and stress fields for 2-D elastic bodies under various thermal loads, including thin structure domains that are difficult to mesh using the finite element method (FEM). The BEM results using constant elements are found to be accurate compared with the analytical solutions, and the accuracy of the BEM results is found to be comparable to that of the FEM with linear elements. In addition, the BEM offers the ease of use in generating the mesh for a thin structure domain or a domain with complicated geometry, such as a perforated plate with randomly distributed holes for which the FEM fails to provide an adequate mesh. These results clearly demonstrate the potential of the developed fast multipole BEM for solving 2-D thermoelasticity problems.     

VARIABLE KINEMATIC MODELLING OF LAMINATED COMPOSITE PLATES

A displacement-based variable kinematic global–local finite element model is developed using hierarchical, multiple assumed displacement fields at two different levels: (1) at the element level, and (2) at the mesh level. The displacement field hierarchy contains both a conventional plate expansion (2-D) and a full layerwise (3-D) expansion. Depending on the accuracy desired, the variable kinematic element can use various terms from the composite displacement field, thus creating a hierarchy of different elements having a wide range of kinematic complexity and representing a number of different mathematical models. The VKFE is then combined with the mesh superposition technique to further increase the computational efficiency and robustness of the computational algorithm. These models are used to analyse a number of laminated composite plate problems that contain localized subregions where significant 3-D stress fields exist (e.g. free-edge effects).     

On a two‐level Newton‐type procedure applied for solving non‐linear elasticity problems

The present work is devoted to the damped Newton method applied for solving a class of non‐linear elasticity problems. Following the approach suggested in earlier related publications, we consider a two‐level procedure which involves (i) solving the non‐linear problem on a coarse mesh, (ii) interpolating the coarse‐mesh solution to the fine mesh, (iii) performing non‐linear iterations on the fine mesh. Numerical experiments suggest that in the case when one is interested in the minimization of the L₂‐norm of the error rather than in the minimization of the residual norm the coarse‐mesh solution gives sufficiently accurate approximation to the displacement field on the fine mesh, and only a few (or even just one) of the costly non‐linear iterations on the fine mesh are needed to achieve an acceptable accuracy of the solution (the accuracy which is of the same order as the accuracy of the Galerkin solution on the fine mesh). Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Finite elements for the dynamic analysis of fluid-solid systems

Several new finite elements are presented for the idealization of two- and three-dimensional coupled fluid-solid systems subjected to static and dynamic loading. The elements are based on a displacement formulation in terms of the displacement degrees-of-freedom at the nodes of the element. The formulation includes the effects of compressible wave propagation and surface sloshing motion. The use of reduced integration techniques and the introduction of rotational constraints in the formulation of the element stiffness eliminates all unnecessary zero-energy modes. A simple method is given which allows the stability of a finite element mesh of fluid elements to be investigated prior to analysis. Hence, the previously encountered problems of ‘element locking’ and ‘hour glass’ modes have been eliminated and a condition of optimum constraint is obtained. Numerical examples are presented which illustrate the accuracy of the element. It is shown that the element behaves very well for non-rectangular geometry. The optimum constraint condition is clearly illustrated by the static solution of a rigid block floating on a mesh of fluid elements.     

A fast boundary element based solver for localized inelastic deformations

We present a numerical method for the solution of nonlinear geomechanical problems involving localized deformation along shear bands and fractures. We leverage the boundary element method to solve for the quasi-static elastic deformation of the medium while rigid-plastic constitutive relations govern the behavior of displacement discontinuity (DD) segments capturing localized deformations. A fully implicit scheme is developed using a hierarchical approximation of the boundary element matrix. Combined with an adequate block preconditioner, this allows to tackle large problems via the use of an iterative solver for the solution of the tangent system. Several two-dimensional examples of the initiation and growth of shear-bands and tensile fractures illustrate the capabilities and accuracy of this technique. The method does not exhibit any mesh dependency associated with localization provided that (i) the softening length-scale is resolved and (ii) the plane of localized deformations is discretized a priori using DD segments.     

Nodal velocity derivatives of finite element solutions: The FiND method for incompressible Navier–Stokes equations

This paper presents the development and application of the finite node displacement (FiND) method to the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations. The method computes high‐accuracy nodal derivatives of the finite element solutions. The approach imposes a small displacement to individual mesh nodes and solves a very small problem on the patch of elements surrounding the node. The only unknown is the value of the solution ( u , p) at the displaced node. A finite difference between the original and the perturbed values provides the directional derivative. Verification by grid refinement studies is shown for two‐dimensional problems possessing a closed‐form solution: a Poiseuille flow and a flow mimicking a boundary layer. For internal nodes, the method yields accuracy slightly superior to that of the superconvergent patch recovery (SPR) technique of Zienkiewicz and Zhu (ZZ). We also present a variant of the method to treat boundary nodes. The local discretization is enriched by inserting an additional mesh point very close to the boundary node of interest. Computations show that the resulting nodal derivatives are much more accurate than those obtained by the ZZ SPR technique. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A finite element method with mesh‐separation‐based approximation technique and its application in modeling crack propagation with adaptive mesh refinement

This paper presents a FEM with mesh‐separation‐based approximation technique that separates a standard element into three geometrically independent elements. A dual mapping scheme is introduced to couple them seamlessly and to derive the element approximation. The novel technique makes it very easy for mesh generation of problems with complex or solution‐dependent, varying geometry. It offers a flexible way to construct displacement approximations and provides a unified framework for the FEM to enjoy some of the key advantages of the Hansbo and Hansbo method, the meshfree methods, the semi‐analytical FEMs, and the smoothed FEM. For problems with evolving discontinuities, the method enables the devising of an efficient crack‐tip adaptive mesh refinement strategy to improve the accuracy of crack‐tip fields. Both the discontinuities due to intra‐element cracking and the incompatibility due to hanging nodes resulted from the element refinement can be treated at the elemental level. The effectiveness and robustness of the present method are benchmarked with several numerical examples. The numerical results also demonstrate that a high precision integral scheme is critical to pass the crack patch test, and it is essential to apply local adaptive mesh refinement for low fracture energy problems. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Second-order accurate constraint formulation for subdivision finite element simulation of thin shells

We present a new method for enforcing boundary conditions within subdivision finite element simulations of thin shells. The proposed framework is demonstrated to be second-order accurate with respect to increasing refinement in the displacement and energy norm for simply supported, clamped, free and symmetric boundary conditions. Second-order accuracy on the boundary is consistent with the accuracy of subdivision-based approaches for the interior of a body. Our proposed framework is applicable to both triangular and quadrilateral refinement schemes, and does not impose any topological requirements upon the underlying subdivision control mesh. Several examples from an obstacle course of benchmark problems are used to demonstrate the convergence of the scheme. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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。     

Adaptive mesh-updating methods for non-linear finite element analysis of shells

We consider methods for adaptive updating of computational meshes during incremental loading of non-linear shell and solid structures. In particular, we focus on updating methods where the initial topology of the mesh is maintained. The movement of the mesh (the convective step) is decoupled from the Lagrangian solution step and is done by using separately computed displacement fields, obtained by solving auxiliary thermoelastic problems. The properties of this mesh-updating procedure are investigated and demonstrated on several examples. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive superposition of finite element meshes in elastodynamic problems

An adaptive finite element procedure is developed for modelling transient phenomena in elastic solids, including both wave propagation and structural dynamics. Although both temporal and spatial adaptivity are addressed, the novel feature of the formulation is the use of mesh superposition to produce spatial refinement (referred to as s‐adaptivity) in transient problems. Spatial error estimation is based on superconvergent patch recovery of higher‐order accurate stresses and is used to guide mesh adaptivity, while the temporal error estimation is based on the assumption of linearly varying third‐order time derivatives of the displacement field and is used to adjust the time step size for the HHT‐α variant of the Newmark direct numerical integration method. Spatial adaptivity of the mesh is performed using a hierarchical h‐refinement scheme that is efficiently implemented using a structured version of finite element mesh superposition. This particular spatial adaptivity scheme is extremely fast and consequently makes it feasible to repeatedly update both the mesh and the time increment as required in an adaptive transient analysis. This work represents the initial effort in applying this type of spatial adaptivity to transient problems. Three example problems are given to demonstrate the performance characteristics of the s‐adaptive procedure. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Some benchmark problems and basic ideas on the accuracy of boundary element analysis

Taken the linear elasticity problems as examples, some benchmark problems are presented to investigate the influence of calculation error and discretization error on the accuracy of boundary element analysis. For the conventional boundary element analysis based on singular kernel function of fundamental solution and using Gaussian elimination method, the main calculation error comes from the integration of kernel and shape function product on each element. Based on some benchmark problems of “simple problem” without discretization error, it can be observed that sometimes a large number of integration points in Gaussian quadrature should be adopted. To guarantee the integration accuracy reliably, an improved adaptive Gaussian quadrature approach is presented and verified. The main error of boundary element analysis is the discretization error, provided the calculation error has been reduced effectively. Based on some benchmark problems, it can be observed that for the bending problems both the constant and linear element are not efficient, the quadratic element with a reasonable refined mesh is required to guarantee the accuracy of boundary element analysis. An error indicator to guide the mesh refinement in the convergence test towards the converged accurate results based on the distribution of boundary effective stress is presented and verified.     

A novel singular ES-FEM method for simulating singular stress fields near the crack tips for linear fracture problems

This paper presents a novel numerical method for effectively simulating the singular stress field for mode-I fracture problems based on the edge-based smoothed finite element method (ES-FEM). Using the unique feature of the ES-FEM formulation, we need only the assumed displacement values (not the derivatives) on the boundary of the smoothing domains, and hence a new technique to construct singular shape functions is devised for the crack tip elements. Some examples have demonstrated that results of the present singular ES-FEM in terms of strain energy, displacement and J-integral are much more accurate than the finite element method using the same mesh.     

An extended Galerkin weak form and a point interpolation method with continuous strain field and superconvergence using triangular mesh

A point interpolation method (PIM) with continuous strain field (PIM-CS) is developed for mechanics problems using triangular background mesh, in which PIM shape functions are used to construct both displacement and strain fields. The strain field constructed is continuous in the entire problem domain, which is achieved by simple linear interpolations using locally smoothed strains around the nodes and points required for the interpolation. A general parameterized functional with a real adjustable parameter α are then proposed for establishing PIM-CS models of special property. We prove theoretically that the PIM-CS has an excellent bound property: strain energy obtained using PIM-CS lies in between those of the compatible FEM and NS-PIM models of the same mesh. Techniques and procedures are then presented to compute the upper and lower bound solutions using the PIM-CS. It is discovered that an extended Galerkin (x-Galerkin) model, as special case resulted from the extended parameterized functional with α = 1, is outstanding in terms of both performance and efficiency. Intensive numerical studies show that upper and lower bound solutions can always be obtained, there exist α values at which the solutions of PIM-CS are of superconvergence, and the x-Galerkin model is capable of producing superconvergent solutions of ultra accuracy that is about 10 times that of the FEM using the same mesh.     

Computation of accurate nodal derivatives of finite element solutions: the finite node displacement method

This paper presents a new method for extracting high‐accuracy nodal derivatives from finite element solutions. The approach involves imposing a finite displacement to individual mesh nodes, and solving a very small problem on the patch of surrounding elements, whose only unknown is the value of the solution at the displaced node. A finite difference between the original and perturbed values provides the directional derivative. Verification is shown for a one‐dimensional diffusion problem with exact nodal solution and for two‐dimensional scalar advective–diffusive problems. For internal nodes the method yields accuracy slightly superior to that of the superconvergent patch recovery (SPR) technique of Zienkiewicz and Zhu (ZZ). We also present a variant of the method to treat boundary nodes. In this case, the local discretization is enriched by inserting an additional mesh point very close to the boundary node of interest. We show that the new method gives normal derivatives at boundary points that are consistent with the so‐called ‘auxiliary fluxes’. The resulting nodal derivatives are much more accurate than those obtained by the ZZ SPR technique. Copyright © 2007 Crown in the right of Canada. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Modelling multiple cohesive crack propagation using a finite element–scaled boundary finite element coupled method

This paper presents an extension of the recently-developed finite element–scaled boundary finite element (FEM–SBFEM) coupled method to model multiple crack propagation in concrete. The concrete bulk and fracture process zones are modelled using SBFEM and nonlinear cohesive interface finite elements (CIEs), respectively. The CIEs are automatically inserted into the SBFEM mesh as the cracks propagate. The algorithm previously devised for single crack propagation is augmented to model problems with multiple cracks and to allow cracks to initiate in an un-cracked SBFEM mesh. It also addresses crack propagation from one subdomain into another, as a result of partitioning a coarse SBFEM mesh, required for some mixed–mode problems. Each crack in the SBFEM mesh propagates when the sign of the Mode-I stress intensity factor at the crack tip turns positive from negative. Its propagation angle is determined using linear elastic fracture mechanics criteria. Three concrete beams involving multiple crack propagation are modelled. The predicted crack propagation patterns and load–displacement curves are in good agreement with data reported in literature.     

EFFECT OF MESH DISTORTION ON THE ACCURACY OF TRANSVERSE SHEAR STRESSES AND THEIR SENSITIVITY COEFFICIENTS IN MULTILAYERED COMPOSITES

SUMMARY

A study is made of the effect of mesh distortion on the accuracy of transverse shear stresses and their first-order and second-order sensitivity coefficients in multilayered composite panels subjected to mechanical and thermal loads. The panels are discretized by using a two-field degenerate solid element, with the fundamental unknowns consisting of both displacement and strain components, and the displacement components having a linear variation throughout the thickness of the laminate. A two-step computational procedure is used for evaluating the transverse shear stresses. In the first step, the in-plane stresses in the different layers are calculated at the numerical quadrature points for each element. In the second step, the transverse shear stresses are evaluated by using piecewise integration, in the thickness direction, of the three-dimensional equilibrium equations. The same procedure is used for evaluating the sensitivity coefficients of transverse shear stresses. Numerical results are presented showing no noticeable degradation in the accuracy of the in-plane stresses and their sensitivity coefficients with mesh distortion. However, such degradation is observed for the transverse shear stresses and their sensitivity coefficients. The standard of comparison is taken to be the exact solution of the three-dimensional thermoelasticity equations of the panel.