Velocity‐based formulations for standard and quasi‐incompressible hypoelastic‐plastic solids

We present three velocity‐based updated Lagrangian formulations for standard and quasi‐incompressible hypoelastic‐plastic solids. Three low‐order finite elements are derived and tested for non‐linear solid mechanics problems. The so‐called V‐element is based on a standard velocity approach, while a mixed velocity–pressure formulation is used for the VP and the VPS elements. The two‐field problem is solved via a two‐step Gauss–Seidel partitioned iterative scheme. First, the momentum equations are solved in terms of velocity increments, as for the V‐element. Then, the constitutive relation for the pressure is solved using the updated velocities obtained at the previous step. For the VPS‐element, the formulation is stabilized using the finite calculus method in order to solve problems involving quasi‐incompressible materials. All the solid elements are validated by solving two‐dimensional and three‐dimensional benchmark problems in statics as in dynamics. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Finite element analysis of anisotropic non-linear incompressible elastic solids by a mixed model

A mixed finite element method is presented for geometrically and materially non-linear analysis of anisotropic incompressible hyperelastic materials. An incremental iteractive total Lagrangian formulation is adopted. The nodal displacements and the hydrostatic pressure are independently interpolated leading to a mixed system of equations, with characteristic zero diagonal terms. Computations are carried out using a three-dimensional linear displacement, constant pressure element. A mixed penalty approximation is then employed to eliminate the pressure variables at the element level. The anisotropic material handling capability of the formulation is tested through a number of transversely isotropic problems and the results compared to analytical solutions. To demonstrate the applicability of this formulation to model complex anisotropic problems, the inflation of a cut toroidal tube with helical fibre orientation is analysed.     

A meshfree‐enriched finite element method for compressible and near‐incompressible elasticity

In this paper, a two‐dimensional displacement‐based meshfree‐enriched FEM (ME‐FEM) is presented for the linear analysis of compressible and near‐incompressible planar elasticity. The ME‐FEM element is established by injecting a first‐order convex meshfree approximation into a low‐order finite element with an additional node. The convex meshfree approximation is constructed using the generalized meshfree approximation method and it possesses the Kronecker‐delta property on the element boundaries. The gradient matrix of ME‐FEM element satisfies the integration constraint for nodal integration and the resultant ME‐FEM formulation is shown to pass the constant stress test for the compressible media. The ME‐FEM interpolation is an element‐wise meshfree interpolation and is proven to be discrete divergence‐free in the incompressible limit. To prevent possible pressure oscillation in the near‐incompressible problems, an area‐weighted strain smoothing scheme incorporated with the divergence‐free ME‐FEM interpolation is introduced to provide the smoothing on strains and pressure. With this smoothed strain field, the discrete equations are derived based on a modified Hu–Washizu variational principle. Several numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method for the compressible and near‐incompressible problems. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A dynamic variational multiscale method for viscoelasticity using linear tetrahedral elements

In this article, we develop a dynamic version of the variational multiscale (D‐VMS) stabilization for nearly/fully incompressible solid dynamics simulations of viscoelastic materials. The constitutive models considered here are based on Prony series expansions, which are rather common in the practice of finite element simulations, especially in industrial/commercial applications. Our method is based on a mixed formulation, in which the momentum equation is complemented by a pressure equation in rate form. The unknown pressure, displacement, and velocity are approximated with piecewise linear, continuous finite element functions. To prevent spurious oscillations, the pressure equation is augmented with a stabilization operator specifically designed for viscoelastic problems, in that it depends on the viscoelastic dissipation. We demonstrate the robustness, stability, and accuracy properties of the proposed method with extensive numerical tests in the case of linear and finite deformations.     

Topology optimization of acoustic–structure interaction problems using a mixed finite element formulation

The paper presents a gradient‐based topology optimization formulation that allows to solve acoustic–structure (vibro‐acoustic) interaction problems without explicit boundary interface representation. In acoustic–structure interaction problems, the pressure and displacement fields are governed by Helmholtz equation and the elasticity equation, respectively. Normally, the two separate fields are coupled by surface‐coupling integrals, however, such a formulation does not allow for free material re‐distribution in connection with topology optimization schemes since the boundaries are not explicitly given during the optimization process. In this paper we circumvent the explicit boundary representation by using a mixed finite element formulation with displacements and pressure as primary variables (a u /p‐formulation). The Helmholtz equation is obtained as a special case of the mixed formulation for the elastic shear modulus equating to zero. Hence, by spatial variation of the mass density, shear and bulk moduli we are able to solve the coupled problem by the mixed formulation. Using this modelling approach, the topology optimization procedure is simply implemented as a standard density approach. Several two‐dimensional acoustic–structure problems are optimized in order to verify the proposed method. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Polygonal finite elements for finite elasticity

Nonlinear elastic materials are of great engineering interest, but challenging to model with standard finite elements. The challenges arise because nonlinear elastic materials are characterized by non‐convex stored‐energy functions as a result of their ability to undergo large reversible deformations, are incompressible or nearly incompressible, and often times possess complex microstructures. In this work, we propose and explore an alternative approach to model finite elasticity problems in two dimensions by using polygonal discretizations. We present both lower order displacement‐based and mixed polygonal finite element approximations, the latter of which consist of a piecewise constant pressure field and a linearly‐complete displacement field at the element level. Through numerical studies, the mixed polygonal finite elements are shown to be stable and convergent. For demonstration purposes, we deploy the proposed polygonal discretization to study the nonlinear elastic response of rubber filled with random and periodic distributions of rigid particles, as well as the development of cavitation instabilities in elastomers containing vacuous defects. These physically‐based examples illustrate the potential of polygonal finite elements in studying and modeling nonlinear elastic materials with complex microstructures under finite deformations. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On using linear elements in incompressible plane strain problems: a simple edge based approach for triangles

In this paper a simple iterative method is presented for finite element solution of incompressible plane strain problems using linear elements. Instead of using a mixed formulation approach, we use an equivalent displacement/velocity approach in an iterative manner. Control volumes are taken for regions which are to exhibit incompressible behaviour. For triangular elements the control volume is chosen as the area built on the parts of each pair of elements at the sides of an edge. In this case, elements are let to exchange volume. It is shown that the proposed edge based approach removes the deficiency of the linear triangular elements i.e. locking effect. Similar edge based approach is applied to the linear quadrilateral elements. However, if the control volume is chosen as the element volume the formulation gives similar results as the discontinuous mixed formulation using one pressure point without exhibiting instability behaviour. The formulation is based on decomposition of the displacement/velocity field into deviatoric and volumetric parts. The volumetric part is iteratively eliminated without confronting locking or instability phenomenon. The iterative procedure is very cheap and simple to be implemented in any FEM code. Several examples are given to demonstrate the performance of the procedure. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the enhancement of low‐order mixed finite element methods for the large deformation analysis of diffusion in solids

A stabilized scheme is developed for mixed finite element methods for strongly coupled diffusion problems in solids capable of large deformations. Enhanced assumed strain techniques are employed to cure spurious oscillation patterns of low‐order displacement/pressure mixed formulations in the incompressible limit for quadrilateral elements and brick elements. A study is presented that shows how hourglass instabilities resulting from geometrically nonlinear enhanced assumed strain methods have to be distinguished from pressure oscillation patterns due to the violation of the inf‐sup condition. Moreover, an element formulation is proposed that provides stable results with respect to both types of instabilities. Comparisons are drawn between material models for incompressible solids of Mooney–Rivlin type and models for standard diffusion in solids with incompressible matrices such as polymeric gels. Representative numerical examples underline the ability of the proposed element formulation to cure instabilities of low‐order mixed formulations. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The least‐squares finite element method in elasticity—Part I: Plane stress or strain with drilling degrees of freedom

A new least‐squares finite element method (LSFEM) for plane elasticity problems is developed based on the first‐order displacement–stress–rotation formulation which includes two new first‐order compatibility constraints among the stresses and the drilling rotation. This LSFEM can accommodate all kinds of equal‐order interpolations. Numerical experiments on various examples including incompressible materials show that the method achieves an optimal rate of convergence for all variables. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Finite calculus formulation for incompressible solids using linear triangles and tetrahedra

Many finite elements exhibit the so‐called ‘volumetric locking’ in the analysis of incompressible or quasi‐incompressible problems.In this paper, a new approach is taken to overcome this undesirable effect. The starting point is a new setting of the governing differential equations using a finite calculus (FIC) formulation. The basis of the FIC method is the satisfaction of the standard equations for balance of momentum (equilibrium of forces) and mass conservation in a domain of finite size and retaining higher order terms in the Taylor expansions used to express the different terms of the differential equations over the balance domain. The modified differential equations contain additional terms which introduce the necessary stability in the equations to overcome the volumetric locking problem. The FIC approach has been successfully used for deriving stabilized finite element and meshless methods for a wide range of advective–diffusive and fluid flow problems. The same ideas are applied in this paper to derive a stabilized formulation for static and dynamic finite element analysis of incompressible solids using linear triangles and tetrahedra. Examples of application of the new stabilized formulation to linear static problems as well as to the semi‐implicit and explicit 2D and 3D non‐linear transient dynamic analysis of an impact problem and a bulk forming process are presented. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hybrid‐Trefftz stress elements for incompressible biphasic media

A wavelet‐based, high‐order time integration method is applied to replace the parabolic problem governing the response of incompressible biphasic media by a set of uncoupled Helmholtz problems. Their formal solutions are used to formulate the stress model of the hybrid‐Trefftz finite element formulation. The stress, pressure and displacement fields are directly approximated and designed to satisfy locally the equilibrium condition in each phase of the mixture. This basis is used to enforce on average the compatibility conditions and the constitutive relations of the mixture. The displacements in the solid and the normal displacement in the fluid are approximated independently on the boundary of the element and the basis is used to enforce in weak form the boundary equilibrium conditions. The resulting solving system is sparse, well suited to adaptive refinement and parallel processing. The energy statements associated with the formulation are recovered and sufficient conditions for the uniqueness of the finite element solutions are stated. Testing problems reported in the literature are used to illustrate the quality of the pressure, stress, displacement and velocity estimates obtained with the hybrid‐Trefftz stress element. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Topology optimization with incompressible materials under small and finite deformations using mixed u/p elements

This paper focuses on topology optimization utilizing incompressible materials under both small‐ and finite‐deformation kinematics. To avoid the volumetric locking that accompanies incompressibility, linear and nonlinear mixed displacement/pressure (u/p) elements are utilized. A number of material interpolation schemes are compared, and a new scheme interpolating both Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio (E ‐ν interpolation) is proposed. The efficacy of this proposed scheme is demonstrated on a number of examples under both small‐ and finite‐deformation kinematics. Excessive mesh distortions that may occur under finite deformations are dealt with by extending a linear energy interpolation approach to the nonlinear u/p formulation and utilizing an adaptive update strategy. The proposed optimization framework is demonstrated to be effective through a number of representative examples.     

Topology synthesis of large‐displacement compliant mechanisms

This paper describes the use of topology optimization as a synthesis tool for the design of large‐displacement compliant mechanisms. An objective function for the synthesis of large‐displacement mechanisms is proposed together with a formulation for synthesis of path‐generating compliant mechanisms. The responses of the compliant mechanisms are modelled using a total Lagrangian finite element formulation, the sensitivity analysis is performed using the adjoint method and the optimization problem is solved using the method of moving asymptotes. Procedures to circumvent some numerical problems are discussed. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Displacement/pressure mixed interpolation in the method of finite spheres

The displacement‐based formulation of the method of finite spheres is observed to exhibit volumetric ‘locking’ when incompressible or nearly incompressible deformations are encountered. In this paper, we present a displacement/pressure mixed formulation as a solution to this problem. We analyse the stability and optimality of the formulation for several discretization schemes using numerical inf–sup tests. Issues concerning computational efficiency are also discussed. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A mixed finite element method for non‐linear and nearly incompressible elasticity based on biorthogonal systems

We present a finite element method for non‐linear and nearly incompressible elasticity. The formulation is based on Petrov–Galerkin discretization for the pressure and is closely related to the average nodal pressure formulation presented earlier in the context of incompressible and nearly incompressible dynamic explicit applications (Commun. Numer. Meth. Engng 1998; 14 :437–449). Some numerical examples are presented to show the efficiency of the approach. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Limit analysis of plates using the EFG method and second‐order cone programming

The meshless element‐free Galerkin (EFG) method is extended to allow computation of the limit load of plates. A kinematic formulation that involves approximating the displacement field using the moving least‐squares technique is developed. Only one displacement variable is required for each EFG node, ensuring that the total number of variables in the resulting optimization problem is kept to a minimum, with far fewer variables being required compared with finite element formulations using compatible elements. A stabilized conforming nodal integration scheme is extended to plastic plate bending problems. The evaluation of integrals at nodal points using curvature smoothing stabilization both keeps the size of the optimization problem small and also results in stable and accurate solutions. Difficulties imposing essential boundary conditions are overcome by enforcing displacements at the nodes directly. The formulation can be expressed as the problem of minimizing a sum of Euclidean norms subject to a set of equality constraints. This non‐smooth minimization problem can be transformed into a form suitable for solution using second‐order cone programming. The procedure is applied to several benchmark beam and plate problems and is found in practice to generate good upper‐bound solutions for benchmark problems. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A VDQ-based multifield approach to the 2D compressible nonlinear elasticity

A numerical multifield methodology is developed to address the large deformation problems of hyperelastic solids based on the 2D nonlinear elasticity in the compressible and nearly incompressible regimes. The governing equations are derived using the Hu-Washizu principle, considering displacement, displacement gradient, and the first Piola-Kirchhoff stress tensor as independent unknowns. In the formulation, the tensor form of equations is replaced by a novel matrix-vector format for computational purposes. In the solution strategy, based on the variational differential quadrature (VDQ) technique and a transformation procedure, a new numerical approach is proposed by which the discretized governing equations are directly obtained through introducing derivative and integral matrix operators. The present method can be regarded as a viable alternative to mixed finite element methods because it is locking free and does not involve complexities related to considering several DOFs for each element in the finite element exterior calculus. Simple implementation is another advantage of this VDQ-based approach. Some well-known examples are solved to demonstrate the reliability and effectiveness of the approach. The results reveal that it has good performance in the large deformation problems of hyperelastic solids in compressible and nearly incompressible regimes.     

A novel isoparametric finite element displacement formulation for axisymmetric analysis of nearly incompressible materials

It is well accepted that severe numerical difficulties arise when using the conventional displacement method to analyse incompressible or nearly incompressible solids. These effects are caused by the kinematic constraints imposed on the nodal velocities by the constant volume condition. In elastic-plastic analysis, these effects are due to a conflict between the plastic flow rule and the finite element discretization. Although several methods have been proposed to cope with this problem, none has been based on the appropriate choice of displacement interpolation functions to minimize the constraints. The theoretical formulation of a new six-noded isoparametric displacement finite element, which is well suited for elastic-plastic analysis of axisymmetric constrained solids by using a rational displacement interpolation function, is presented in this paper. The proposed displacement interpolation function implies that the displacement in the axial direction and the product of the displacement in the radial direction and the radius should be treated as two independent basic variables. Alternatively, the proposed displacement interpolation function can also be implemented in a conventional displacement formulation simply by using a modified shape function matrix. The suitability of the proposed formulations is first studied theoretically by assessing the number of degrees of freedom per constraint and then verified by performing numerical experiments on typical boundary value problems which involve incompressible behaviour.     

Discontinuous Galerkin methods with plane waves for the displacement‐based acoustic equation

Several special finite element methods have been proposed to solve Helmholtz problems in the mid‐frequency regime, such as the Partition of Unity Method, the Ultra Weak Variational Formulation and the Discontinuous Enrichment Method. The first main purpose of this paper is to present a discontinuous Galerkin method with plane waves (which is a variant of the Discontinuous Enrichment Method) to solve the displacement‐based acoustic equation. The use of the displacement variable is often necessary in the context of fluid–structure interactions. A well‐known issue with this model is the presence of spurious vortical modes when one uses standard finite elements such as Lagrange elements. This problem, also known as the locking phenomenon, is observed with several other vector based equations such as incompressible elasticity and electromagnetism. So this paper also aims at assessing if the special finite element methods suffer from the locking phenomenon in the context of the displacement acoustic equation. The discontinuous Galerkin method presented in this paper is shown to be very accurate and stable, i.e. no spurious modes are observed. The optimal choice of the various parameters are discussed with regards to numerical accuracy and conditioning. Some interesting properties of the mixed displacement–pressure formulation are also presented. Furthermore, the use of the Partition of Unity Method is also presented, but it is found that spurious vortical modes may appear with this method. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.