Experience report on the application of genetic algorithms to reduce costs of the software validation process in the automotive sector during an engine control unit project

Software Quality Journal - The number of electronic control units (ECU) installed in vehicles is increasingly high. Manufacturers must improve the software quality and reduce cost by proposing...     

3D mass-redistributed finite element method in structural–acoustic interaction problems

A 2D mass-redistributed finite element method (MR-FEM) for pure acoustic problems was recently proposed to reduce the dispersion error. In this paper, the 3D MR-FEM is further developed to solve more complicated structural–acoustic interaction problems. The smoothed Galerkin weak form is adopted to formulate the discretized equations for the structure, and MR-FEM is applied in acoustic domain. The global equations of structural–acoustic interaction problems are then established by coupling the MR-FEM for the acoustic domain and the edge-based smoothed finite element method for the structure. The perfect balance between the mass matrix and stiffness matrix is able to improve the accuracy of the acoustic domain significantly. The gradient smoothing technique used in the structural domain can provide a proper softening effect to the “overly-stiff” FEM model. A number of numerical examples have demonstrated the effectiveness of the mass-redistributed method with smoothed strain.     

Vademecum‐based GFEM (V‐GFEM): optimal enrichment for transient problems

This paper proposes a generalized finite element method based on the use of parametric solutions as enrichment functions. These parametric solutions are precomputed off‐line and stored in memory in the form of a computational vademecum so that they can be used on‐line with negligible cost. This renders a more efficient computational method than traditional finite element methods at performing simulations of processes. One key issue of the proposed method is the efficient computation of the parametric enrichments. These are computed and efficiently stored in memory by employing proper generalized decompositions. Although the presented method can be broadly applied, it is particularly well suited in manufacturing processes involving localized physics that depend on many parameters, such as welding. After introducing the vademecum‐generalized finite element method formulation, we present some numerical examples related to the simulation of thermal models encountered in welding processes. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.