Voronoi‐based peridynamics and cracking analysis with adaptive refinement

The most common technique for the numerical implementation of peridynamic theory is the uniform discretization together with constant horizon. However, unlike the nonuniform discretization and varying horizons, it is not a natural and intrinsic component of the adaptive refinement analysis and multiscale modeling. Besides, it encounters discretization difficulty in analyzing irregular structures. Therefore, to analyze problems with nonuniform discretization and varying horizons and solve the resulting problems of ghost forces and spurious wave reflection, the dual‐horizon peridynamics based on uniform discretization is extended to the nonuniform discretization based on Voronoi diagrams, for which we call it Voronoi‐based peridynamics. We redefine the damage definition as well. Next, an adaptive refinement analysis method based on the proposed Voronoi‐based peridynamics and its numerical implementation is introduced. Finally, the traditional bond‐based peridynamics and the Voronoi‐based peridynamics with or without refinement are used to simulate 4 benchmark problems. The examples of 2‐D quasi‐static elastic deformation, 2‐D wave propagation, 2‐D dynamic crack growth, and 3‐D simulation of the Kalthoff‐Winkler experiment demonstrate the efficiency and effectivity of the proposed Voronoi‐based peridynamics. Further, the adaptive refinement analysis can be used to obtain reasonable crack path and crack propagation speed with reduced computational burden.     

Studies of dynamic crack propagation and crack branching with peridynamics

In this paper we discuss the peridynamic analysis of dynamic crack branching in brittle materials and show results of convergence studies under uniform grid refinement (m-convergence) and under decreasing the peridynamic horizon (δ-convergence). Comparisons with experimentally obtained values are made for the crack-tip propagation speed with three different peridynamic horizons. We also analyze the influence of the particular shape of the micro-modulus function and of different materials (Duran 50 glass and soda-lime glass) on the crack propagation behavior. We show that the peridynamic solution for this problem captures all the main features, observed experimentally, of dynamic crack propagation and branching, as well as it obtains crack propagation speeds that compare well, qualitatively and quantitatively, with experimental results published in the literature. The branching patterns also correlate remarkably well with tests published in the literature that show several branching levels at higher stress levels reached when the initial notch starts propagating. We notice the strong influence reflecting stress waves from the boundaries have on the shape and structure of the crack paths in dynamic fracture. All these computational solutions are obtained by using the minimum amount of input information: density, elastic stiffness, and constant fracture energy. No special criteria for crack propagation, crack curving, or crack branching are used: dynamic crack propagation is obtained here as part of the solution. We conclude that peridynamics is a reliable formulation for modeling dynamic crack propagation.     

Dual‐horizon peridynamics

In this paper, we develop a dual‐horizon peridynamics (DH‐PD) formulation that naturally includes varying horizon sizes and completely solves the ‘ghost force’ issue. Therefore, the concept of dual horizon is introduced to consider the unbalanced interactions between the particles with different horizon sizes. The present formulation fulfills both the balances of linear momentum and angular momentum exactly. Neither the ‘partial stress tensor’ nor the ‘slice’ technique is needed to ameliorate the ghost force issue. We will show that the traditional peridynamics can be derived as a special case of the present DH‐PD. All three peridynamic formulations, namely, bond‐based, ordinary state‐based, and non‐ordinary state‐based peridynamics, can be implemented within the DH‐PD framework. Our DH‐PD formulation allows for h‐adaptivity and can be implemented in any existing peridynamics code with minimal changes. A simple adaptive refinement procedure is proposed, reducing the computational cost. Both two‐dimensional and three‐dimensional examples including the Kalthoff–Winkler experiment and plate with branching cracks are tested to demonstrate the capability of the method. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An efficient adaptive analysis procedure using the edge-based smoothed point interpolation method (ES-PIM) for 2D and 3D problems

In this paper, an efficient adaptive analysis procedure is proposed using the newly developed edge-based smoothed point interpolation method (ES-PIM) for both two dimensional (2D) and three dimensional (3D) elasticity problems. The ES-PIM works well with three-node triangular and four-node tetrahedral meshes, is easy to be implemented for complicated geometry, and can obtain numerical results of much better accuracy and higher convergence rate than the standard finite element method (FEM) with the same set of meshes. All these important features make it an ideal candidate for adaptive analysis. In the present adaptive procedure, a novel error indicator is devised for ES-PIM settings, which evaluates the maximum difference of strain energy values among the vertexes of each background cell. A simple h-type local refinement scheme is adopted together with a mesh generator based on Delaunay technology. Intensive numerical studies of 2D and 3D examples indicate that the proposed adaptive procedure can effectively capture the stress concentration and solution singularities, carry out local refinement automatically, and hence achieve much higher convergence for the solutions in strain energy norm compared to the general uniform refinement.     

Discretized peridynamics for linear elastic solids

Peridynamics is a theory of continuum mechanics employing a nonlocal model that can simulate fractures and discontinuities (Askari et?al. J Phys 125:012–078, 2008; Silling J Mech Phys Solids 48(1):175–209, 2000). It reformulates continuum mechanics in forms of integral equations rather than partial differential equations to calculate the force on a material point. A connection between bond forces and the stress in the classical (local) theory is established for the calculation of peridynamic stress, which is calculated by summing up bond forces passing through or ending at the cross section of a node. The peridynamic stress and the constitutive law in elasticity are used for the derivation of one- and three-dimensional numerical micromoduli. For three-dimensional discretized peridynamics, the numerical micromodulus is larger than the analytical micromodulus, and converges to the analytical value as the horizon to grid spacing ratio increases. A comparison of material responses in a three-dimensional discretized peridynamic model using numerical and analytical micromoduli, respectively, is performed for different horizons. As the horizon increases, the boundary effect is more conspicuous, and the errors increase in the back-calculated Young’s modulus and strains. For the simulation of materials of Poisson’s ratios other than 1/4, a pairwise compensation scheme for discretized peridynamics is proposed. Compared with classical (local) elasticity solutions, the computational results by applying the proposed scheme show good agreement in the strain, the resultant Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio.     

Automatic adaptive FE analysis of thin‐walled structures using 3D solid elements

In this study, a new automatic adaptive refinement procedure for thin‐walled structures using 3D solid elements is suggested. This procedure employs a specially designed superconvergent patch recovery (SPR) procedure for stress recovery, the Zienkiewicz and Zhu (Z–Z) error estimator for the a posteriori error estimation, a new refinement strategy for new element size prediction and a special mesh generator for adaptive mesh generation. The proposed procedure is different from other schemes in such a way that the problem domain is separated into two distinct parts: the shell part and the junction part. For stress recovery and error estimation in the shell part, special nodal coordinate systems are used and the stress field is separated into two components. For the refinement strategy, different procedures are employed for the estimation of new element sizes in the shell and the junction parts. Numerical examples are given to validate the effectiveness of the suggested procedure. It is found that by using the suggested refinement procedure, when comparing with uniform refinement, higher convergence rates were achieved and more accurate final solutions were obtained by using fewer degrees of freedoms and less amount of computational time. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An adaptive interface‐enriched generalized FEM for the treatment of problems with curved interfaces

An adaptive refinement scheme is presented to reduce the geometry discretization error and provide higher‐order enrichment functions for the interface‐enriched generalized FEM. The proposed method relies on the h‐adaptive and p‐adaptive refinement techniques to reduce the discrepancy between the exact and discretized geometries of curved material interfaces. A thorough discussion is provided on identifying the appropriate level of the refinement for curved interfaces based on the size of the elements of the background mesh. Varied techniques are then studied for selecting the quasi‐optimal location of interface nodes to obtain a more accurate approximation of the interface geometry. We also discuss different approaches for creating the integration sub‐elements and evaluating the corresponding enrichment functions together with their impact on the performance and computational cost of higher‐order enrichments. Several examples are presented to demonstrate the application of the adaptive interface‐enriched generalized FEM for modeling thermo‐mechanical problems with intricate geometries. The accuracy and convergence rate of the method are also studied in these example problems. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A two‐dimensional ordinary,state‐based peridynamic model for linearly elastic solids

Peridynamics is a non‐local mechanics theory that uses integral equations to include discontinuities directly in the constitutive equations. A three‐dimensional, state‐based peridynamics model has been developed previously for linearly elastic solids with a customizable Poisson's ratio. For plane stress and plane strain conditions, however, a two‐dimensional model is more efficient computationally. Here, such a two‐dimensional state‐based peridynamics model is presented. For verification, a 2D rectangular plate with a round hole in the middle is simulated under constant tensile stress. Dynamic relaxation and energy minimization methods are used to find the steady‐state solution. The model shows m‐convergence and δ‐convergence behaviors when m increases and δ decreases. Simulation results show a close quantitative matching of the displacement and stress obtained from the 2D peridynamics and a finite element model used for comparison. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

C1 macroelements in adaptive finite element methods

Some interesting properties of composite basis functions for C¹ macroelements are investigated, including their use for constructing conforming C¹ function spaces on non‐conforming adaptively refined meshes. Of particular interest is the classical cubic Hsieh–Clough–Tocher 3‐split triangle because of its simplicity and convergence properties in fourth‐order problems, as compared with the Powell–Sabin–Heindl 6‐split and 12‐split triangles. A posteriori error indicators for adaptive refinement are developed. Numerical experiments demonstrate convergence rates, and adaptive refinement performance based on a simplified error indicator is tested. Extensibility to analogous three‐dimensional tetrahedral elements is briefly discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive analysis of thin shells using facet elements

An adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) procedure is used in static thin shell analysis using triangular facet shell elements. The procedure described herein uses the h-version of adaptive refinement based on an error estimate determined by using the best guess values of bending moments and membrane forces obtained from a previous solution. It includes the use of a relaxation factor to achieve better convergence. Some examples are presented to illustrate this method. The results obtained are compared with those of uniform mesh refinement (UMR).     

Adaptive component mode synthesis in linear elasticity

Component mode synthesis (CMS) is a classical method for the reduction of large‐scale finite element models in linear elasticity. In this paper we develop a methodology for adaptive refinement of CMS models. The methodology is based on a posteriori error estimates that determine to what degree each CMS subspace influence the error in the reduced solution. We consider a static model problem and prove a posteriori error estimates for the error in a linear goal quantity as well as in the energy and L² norms. Automatic control of the error in the reduced solution is accomplished through an adaptive algorithm that determines suitable dimensions of each CMS subspace. The results are demonstrated in numerical examples. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Voxel‐based meshing and unit‐cell analysis of textile composites

Unit‐cell homogenization techniques are frequently used together with the finite element method to compute effective mechanical properties for a wide range of different composites and heterogeneous materials systems. For systems with very complicated material arrangements, mesh generation can be a considerable obstacle to usage of these techniques. In this work, pixel‐based (2D) and voxel‐based (3D) meshing concepts borrowed from image processing are thus developed and employed to construct the finite element models used in computing the micro‐scale stress and strain fields in the composite. The potential advantage of these techniques is that generation of unit‐cell models can be automated, thus requiring far less human time than traditional finite element models. Essential ideas and algorithms for implementation of proposed techniques are presented. In addition, a new error estimator based on sensitivity of virtual strain energy to mesh refinement is presented and applied. The computational costs and rate of convergence for the proposed methods are presented for three different mesh‐refinement algorithms: uniform refinement; selective refinement based on material boundary resolution; and adaptive refinement based on error estimation. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An adaptive level set method based on two‐level uniform meshes and its application to dislocation dynamics

In this paper, we present an adaptive level set method for motion of high codimensional objects (e.g., curves in three dimensions). This method uses only two (or a few fixed) levels of meshes. A uniform coarse mesh is defined over the whole computational domain. Any coarse mesh cell that contains the moving object is further divided into a uniform fine mesh. The coarse‐to‐fine ratios in the mesh refinement can be adjusted to achieve optimal efficiency. Refinement and coarsening (removing the fine mesh within a coarse grid cell) are performed dynamically during the evolution. In this adaptive method, the computation is localized mostly near the moving objects; thus, the computational cost is significantly reduced compared with the uniform mesh over the whole domain with the same resolution. In this method, the level set equations can be solved on these uniform meshes of different levels directly using standard high‐order numerical methods. This method is examined by numerical examples of moving curves and applications to dislocation dynamics simulations. This two‐level adaptive method also provides a basis for using locally varying time stepping to further reduce the computational cost. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive global–local refinement strategy based on the interior error estimates of the h-method

An adaptive global–local refinement strategy based on the interior error estimates of the h-method is proposed. Adaptive global–local refinement strategy is aimed at constructing nearly optimal finite element meshes, where the force transfer to the local region of interest is sufficiently accurate so that the local phenomena of interest is resolved with a user-specified accuracy. Numerical examples for linear elasticity problems in two dimensions together with a comparison to the classical adaptive h-refinement strategy based on the equidistribution of errors are presented to validate the present formulation.     

An adaptive multiresolution method for parabolic PDEs with time‐step control

We present an efficient adaptive numerical scheme for parabolic partial differential equations based on a finite volume (FV) discretization with explicit time discretization using embedded Runge–Kutta (RK) schemes. A multiresolution strategy allows local grid refinement while controlling the approximation error in space. The costly fluxes are evaluated on the adaptive grid only. Compact RK methods of second and third order are then used to choose automatically the new time step while controlling the approximation error in time. Non‐admissible choices of the time step are avoided by limiting its variation. The implementation of the multiresolution representation uses a dynamic tree data structure, which allows memory compression and CPU time reduction. This new numerical scheme is validated using different classical test problems in one, two and three space dimensions. The gain in memory and CPU time with respect to the FV scheme on a regular grid is reported, which demonstrates the efficiency of the new method. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Closed form stiffness matrices and error estimators for plane hierarchic triangular elements

Closed form expressions for the stiffness matrix and a simple error estimator and error indicator are derived for plane straight sided triangular finite elements in elasticity problems. The calculation of the error estimator is performed on an element by element basis, and is found to be very accurate and efficient. In general, the solutions for benchmark problems using the error indicators for selective refinement of the regions show accelerated convergence when compared to the convergence rate of solutions using uniform mesh refinement. Evaluation of the stiffness matrices and error estimators using explicit formulations is found to be several times faster than numerical integration.     

基于非局部LSM优化的近场动力学及脆性材料变形模拟

在经典近场动力学模型的基础上，通过小变形假定将近场动力学中的微模量与经典理论中的弹性常数建立联系，引入可以反映非局部作用特性的核函数提高计算精度，利用刚度等效的方式建立有关微模量的线性方程组，并通过寻求不定线性方程组最小二乘(LSM)最小范数解的方式对近场动力学中微模量进行优化，根据二次规划得到最优非负模量。利用优化后的方法对二维平板在单轴和双轴荷载作用下的变形及含预制裂纹脆性材料在荷载下的裂纹扩展进行了模拟并将结果与理论经典近场动力学方法结果对比。结果表明:优化后的方法可以较好的反映结构在荷载条件下的变形与破坏特性，与经典方法相比材料变形模拟在最大误差及误差范围具有良好的改善，并且模拟裂纹扩展过程在同等计算成本下具有更优的收敛速度及收敛结果，进一步验证了所提出方法的有效性，有着较为广泛的应用前景。     

An automatic adaptive refinement procedure for the reproducing kernel particle method. Part II: Adaptive refinement

In Part II of this study, an automatic adaptive refinement procedure using the reproducing kernel particle method (RKPM) for the solution of 2D linear boundary value problems is suggested. Based in the theoretical development and the numerical experiments done in Part I of this study, the Zienkiewicz and Zhu (Z–Z) error estimation scheme is combined with a new stress recovery procedure for the a posteriori error estimation of the adaptive refinement procedure. By considering the a priori convergence rate of the RKPM and the estimated error norm, an adaptive refinement strategy for the determination of optimal point distribution is proposed. In the suggested adaptive refinement scheme, the local refinement indicators used are computed by considering the partition of unity property of the RKPM shape functions. In addition, a simple but effective variable support size definition scheme is suggested to ensure the robustness of the adaptive RKPM procedure. The performance of the suggested adaptive procedure is tested by using it to solve several benchmark problems. Numerical results indicated that the suggested refinement scheme can lead to the generation of nearly optimal meshes for both smooth and singular problems. The optimal convergence rate of the RKPM is restored and thus the effectivity indices of the Z–Z error estimator are converging to the ideal value of unity as the meshes are refined.     

On continuous,discontinuous, mixed,and primal hybrid finite element methods for second‐order elliptic problems

Finite element formulations for second‐order elliptic problems, including the classic H¹‐conforming Galerkin method, dual mixed methods, a discontinuous Galerkin method, and two primal hybrid methods, are implemented and numerically compared on accuracy and computational performance. Excepting the discontinuous Galerkin formulation, all the other formulations allow static condensation at the element level, aiming at reducing the size of the global system of equations. For a three‐dimensional test problem with smooth solution, the simulations are performed with h‐refinement, for hexahedral and tetrahedral meshes, and uniform polynomial degree distribution up to four. For a singular two‐dimensional problem, the results are for approximation spaces based on given sets of hp‐refined quadrilateral and triangular meshes adapted to an internal layer. The different formulations are compared in terms of L²‐convergence rates of the approximation errors for the solution and its gradient, number of degrees of freedom, both with and without static condensation. Some insights into the required computational effort for each simulation are also given.