A cell-based smoothed discrete shear gap method (CS-FEM-DSG3) was recently proposed and proven to be robust for free vibration analyses of Reissner-Mindlin shell. The method improves significantly the accuracy of the solution due to softening effect of the cell-based strain smoothing technique. In addition, due to using only three-node triangular elements generated automatically, the CS-FEM-DSG3 can be applied flexibly for arbitrary complicated geometric domains. However so far, the CS-FEM-DSG3 has been only developed for analyzing intact structures without possessing internal cracks. The paper hence tries to extend the CS-FEM-DSG3 for free vibration analysis of cracked Reissner-Mindlin shells by integrating the original CS-FEM-DSG3 with discontinuous and crack−tip singular enrichment functions of the extended finite element method (XFEM) to give a so-called extended cell-based smoothed discrete shear gap method (XCS-FEM-DSG3). The accuracy and reliability of the novel XCS-FEM-DSG3 for free vibration analysis of cracked Reissner-Mindlin shells are investigated through solving three numerical examples and comparing with commercial software ANSYS.
This paper deals with the fatigue crack growth simulations of three-dimensional linear elastic cracks by XFEM under cyclic thermal load. Both temperature and displacement approximations are extrinsically enriched by Heaviside and crack front enrichment functions. Crack growth is modelled by successive linear extensions, and the end points of these linear extensions are joined by cubic spline segments to obtain a modified crack front. Different crack geometries such as planer, non-planer and arbitrary spline shape cracks are simulated under thermal shock, adiabatic and isothermal loads to reveal the sturdiness and versatility of the XFEM approach.
Computational homogenization is a versatile tool that can extract effective properties of heterogeneous or composite material through averaging technique. Self-healing concrete (SHC) is a heterogeneous material which has different constituents as cement matrix, sand and healing agent carrying capsules. Computational homogenization tool is applied in this paper to evaluate the effective properties of self-healing concrete. With this technique, macro and micro scales are bridged together which forms the basis for multi-scale modeling. Representative volume element (RVE) is a small (microscopic) cell which contains all the microphases of the microstructure. This paper presents a technique for RVE design of SHC and shows the influence of volume fractions of different constituents, RVE size and mesh uniformity on the homogenization results.
Composite materials reinforced with carbon nanotubes were mechanical tested using Arcan test rig under Mode-I, Mode-II and mixed mode loading conditions to obtain their fracture properties. The butterfly composite specimens were fabricated with 0.02, 0.05 and 0.1 wt % CNTs. The polyester/CNT composite was fabricated using VRTM (Vacuum Resin Transfer Molding) where the CNTs were first functionalised to reach an optimum properties. Arcan test rig was designed and fabricated to work with the Shimadzu testing machine. The results show that the functionalised CNTs have improved the fracture behavior by acting as bridge between the cracked face. In addition, the fracture properties were not improved for the higher weight fraction of 0.1 wt% CNTs.
The free vibration analysis of cracked thin plates via a quasi-convex coupled isogeometric-meshfree method is presented. This formulation employs the consistently coupled isogeometric-meshfree strategy where a mixed basis vector of the convex B-splines is used to impose the consistency conditions throughout the whole problem domain. Meanwhile, the rigid body modes related to the mixed basis vector and reproducing conditions are also discussed. The mixed basis vector simultaneously offers the consistent isogeometric-meshfree coupling in the coupled region and the quasi-convex property for the meshfree shape functions in the meshfree region, which is particularly attractive for the vibration analysis. The quasi-convex meshfree shape functions mimic the isogeometric basis function as well as offer the meshfree nodal arrangement flexibility. Subsequently, this approach is exploited to study the free vibration analysis of cracked plates, in which the plate geometry is exactly represented by the isogeometric basis functions, while the cracks are discretized by meshfree nodes and highly smoothing approximation is invoked in the rest of the problem domain. The efficacy of the present method is illustrated through several numerical examples.
In this paper, elasto-plastic XFEM simulations have been performed to evaluate the fatigue life of plane crack problems in the presence of various defects. The stress-strain response of the material is modeled by Ramberg-Osgood equation. The von-Mises failure criterion has been used with isotropic hardening. The J-integral for two fracture modes (mode-I and mode-II) is obtained by decomposing the displacement and stress fields into their symmetric and antisymmetric parts, then individual stress intensity factors are extracted from J-integral. The fatigue life obtained by EPFM is found quite close to that obtained by LEFM.
This is the first manuscript presenting an extended meshfree method for thermo- elastic fracture which does not exploit a crack tip enrichment. The crack is modeled by partition of unity enrichment of the displacement and temperature field. Only a step function is employed that facilitates the implementation. To ensure that crack tip is at the correct position, a Lagrange multiplier field ahead of the crack tip is introduced along a line. The Lagrange multiplier nodal parameters are discretised with the available meshfree functions. Two benchmark examples illustrate the efficiency of the method.
In this paper, the debonding of a single fiber-matrix system of carbon fiber reinforced composite (CFRP) AS4/Epson 828 material is studied using Cohesive Zone Model (CZM). The effect of parameters namely, maximum tangential contact stress, tangential slip distance and artificial damping coefficient on the debonding length at the interface of the fiber-matrix is analyzed. Contact elements used in the CZM are coupled based on a bilinear stress-strain curve. Load is applied on the matrix, tangential to the interface. Hence, debonding is observed primarily in Mode II. Wide range of values are considered to study the inter-dependency of the parameters and its effect on debonding length. Out of the three parameters mentioned, artificial damping coefficient and tangential slip distance significantly affect debonding length. A thorough investigation is recommended for case wise interface debonding analysis, to estimate the optimal parametric values while using CZM.
In this paper, the damage locating vector (DLV) method using normalized cumulative energy (nce) is employed to locate multiple damage sites in laminated composite beam structures. Numerical simulations of two laminated composite beams are employed to investigate several damage scenarios in which the degradation of elements is modeled by the reduction in the longitudinal Young’s modulus and transverse Young’s modulus of beam layers. The results show that the DLV method gives good performance for this kind of structure.
Thermo-mechanical coupling in shape memory alloys is a very complicated phenomenon. The heat generation/absorption during forward/reverse transformation can lead to temperature-dependent variation of its mechanical behavior in the forms of superelasticity and shape memory effect. However, unlike the usual assumption, slow loading rate cannot guarantee an isothermal process. A two-dimensional thermo-mechanically coupled algorithm is proposed based on the original model of Lagoudas to efficiently model both superelasticity and shape memory effects and the influence of various strain rates, aspect ratios and boundary conditions. To implement the coupled model into a finite element code, a numerical staggered algorithm is employed. A number of simulations are performed to verify the proposed approach with available experimental and numerical data and to assess its efficiency in solving complex SMA problems.
This paper presents a simple and efficient approach for predicting the plastic limit loads in cracked plane-strain structures. We use two levels of mesh repartitioning for the finite element limit analysis. The master level handles an adaptive primal-mesh process through a dissipation-based indicator. The slave level performs the subdivision of each triangle into three sub-triangles and constitutes a dual mesh from a pair of two adjacent sub-triangles shared by common edges of the primal mesh. Applying a strain smoothing projection to the strain rates on the dual mesh, the incompressibility constraint and the flow rule constraint are imposed over the edge-based smoothing domains and everywhere in the problem domain. The limit analysis problem is recast into the compact form of a second-order cone programming (SOCP) for the purpose of exploiting interior-point solvers. The present method retains a low number of optimization variables. It offers a convenient way for designing and solving the large-scale optimization problems effectively. Several benchmark examples are given to show the simplicity and effectiveness of the present method.
