TY - JOUR A1 - Zhao, Jun-Hua A1 - Guo, Wanlin A1 - Rabczuk, Timon T1 - An analytical molecular mechanics model for the elastic properties of crystalline polyethylene JF - Journal of Applied Physics N2 - We present an analytical model to relate the elastic properties of crystalline polyethylene based on a molecular mechanics approach. Along the polymer chains direction, the united-atom (UA) CH2-CH2 bond stretching, angle bending potentials are replaced with equivalent Euler-Bernoulli beams. Between any two polymer chains, the explicit formulae are derived for the van der Waals interaction represented by the linear springs of different stiffness. Then, the nine independent elastic constants are evaluated systematically using the formulae. The analytical model is finally validated by present united-atom molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and against available all-atom molecular dynamics results in the literature. The established analytical model provides an efficient route for mechanical characterization of crystalline polymers and related materials. KW - Angewandte Mathematik KW - Strukturmechanik Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4745035 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Thai, Chien H. A1 - Nguyen-Xuan, Hung A1 - Nguyen-Thanh, Nhon A1 - Le, T.H. A1 - Nguyen-Thoi, T. A1 - Rabczuk, Timon T1 - Static, free vibration and buckling analysis of laminated composite Reissner-Mindlin plates using NURBS-based isogeometric approach JF - International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering N2 - This paper presents a novel numerical procedure based on the framework of isogeometric analysis for static, free vibration, and buckling analysis of laminated composite plates using the first-order shear deformation theory. The isogeometric approach utilizes non-uniform rational B-splines to implement for the quadratic, cubic, and quartic elements. Shear locking problem still exists in the stiffness formulation, and hence, it can be significantly alleviated by a stabilization technique. Several numerical examples are presented to show the performance of the method, and the results obtained are compared with other available ones. KW - Angewandte Mathematik KW - Strukturmechanik Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/nme.4282 SP - 571 EP - 603 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Talebi, Hossein A1 - Zi, Goangseup A1 - Silani, Mohammad A1 - Samaniego, Esteban A1 - Rabczuk, Timon T1 - A simple circular cell method for multilevel finite element analysis JF - Journal of Applied Mathematics N2 - A simple multiscale analysis framework for heterogeneous solids based on a computational homogenization technique is presented. The macroscopic strain is linked kinematically to the boundary displacement of a circular or spherical representative volume which contains the microscopic information of the material. The macroscopic stress is obtained from the energy principle between the macroscopic scale and the microscopic scale. This new method is applied to several standard examples to show its accuracy and consistency of the method proposed. KW - Angewandte Mathematik KW - Strukturmechanik Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/526846 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Talebi, Hossein A1 - Samaniego, C. A1 - Samaniego, Esteban A1 - Rabczuk, Timon T1 - On the numerical stability and mass-lumping schemes for explicit enriched meshfree methods JF - International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering N2 - Meshfree methods (MMs) such as the element free Galerkin (EFG)method have gained popularity because of some advantages over other numerical methods such as the finite element method (FEM). A group of problems that have attracted a great deal of attention from the EFG method community includes the treatment of large deformations and dealing with strong discontinuities such as cracks. One efficient solution to model cracks is adding special enrichment functions to the standard shape functions such as extended FEM, within the FEM context, and the cracking particles method, based on EFG method. It is well known that explicit time integration in dynamic applications is conditionally stable. Furthermore, in enriched methods, the critical time step may tend to very small values leading to computationally expensive simulations. In this work, we study the stability of enriched MMs and propose two mass-lumping strategies. Then we show that the critical time step for enriched MMs based on lumped mass matrices is of the same order as the critical time step of MMs without enrichment. Moreover, we show that, in contrast to extended FEM, even with a consistent mass matrix, the critical time step does not vanish even when the crack directly crosses a node. KW - Angewandte Mathematik KW - Strukturmechanik Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/nme.3275 SP - 1009 EP - 1027 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Simpson, R. A1 - Bordas, Stéphane Pierre Alain A1 - Trevelyan, J. A1 - Kerfriden, Pierre A1 - Rabczuk, Timon T1 - An Isogeometric Boundary Element Method for elastostatic analysis JF - Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering N2 - The concept of isogeometric analysis, where functions that are used to describe geometry in CAD software are used to approximate the unknown fields in numerical simulations, has received great attention in recent years. The method has the potential to have profound impact on engineering design, since the task of meshing, which in some cases can add significant overhead, has been circumvented. Much of the research effort has been focused on finite element implementations of the isogeometric concept, but at present, little has been seen on the application to the Boundary Element Method. The current paper proposes an Isogeometric Boundary Element Method (BEM), which we term IGABEM, applied to two-dimensional elastostatic problems using Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS). We find it is a natural fit with the isogeometric concept since both the NURBS approximation and BEM deal with quantities entirely on the boundary. The method is verified against analytical solutions where it is seen that superior accuracies are achieved over a conventional quadratic isoparametric BEM implementation. KW - Angewandte Mathematik KW - Strukturmechanik Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cma.2011.08.008 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Nguyen-Xuan, Hung A1 - Rabczuk, Timon A1 - Nguyen-Thoi, T. A1 - Tran, T. A1 - Nguyen-Thanh, Nhon T1 - Computation of limit and shakedown loads using a node-based smoothed finite element method JF - International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering N2 - This paper presents a novel numerical procedure for computing limit and shakedown loads of structures using a node-based smoothed FEM in combination with a primal–dual algorithm. An associated primal–dual form based on the von Mises yield criterion is adopted. The primal-dual algorithm together with a Newton-like iteration are then used to solve this associated primal–dual form to determine simultaneously both approximate upper and quasi-lower bounds of the plastic collapse limit and the shakedown limit. The present formulation uses only linear approximations and its implementation into finite element programs is quite simple. Several numerical examples are given to show the reliability, accuracy, and generality of the present formulation compared with other available methods. KW - Angewandte Mathematik KW - Strukturmechanik Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/nme.3317 SP - 287 EP - 310 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Nguyen-Vinh, H. A1 - Bakar, I. A1 - Msekh, Mohammed Abdulrazzak A1 - Song, Jeong-Hoon A1 - Muthu, Jacob A1 - Zi, Goangseup A1 - Le, P. A1 - Bordas, Stéphane Pierre Alain A1 - Simpson, R. A1 - Natarajan, S. A1 - Lahmer, Tom A1 - Rabczuk, Timon T1 - Extended Finite Element Method for Dynamic Fracture of Piezo-Electric Materials JF - Engineering Fracture Mechanics N2 - We present an extended finite element formulation for dynamic fracture of piezo-electric materials. The method is developed in the context of linear elastic fracture mechanics. It is applied to mode I and mixed mode-fracture for quasi-steady cracks. An implicit time integration scheme is exploited. The results are compared to results obtained with the boundary element method and show excellent agreement. KW - Angewandte Mathematik KW - Stochastik KW - Strukturmechanik Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.engfracmech.2012.04.025 SP - 19 EP - 31 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Natarajan, S. A1 - Chakraborty, S. A1 - Thangavel, M. A1 - Bordas, Stéphane Pierre Alain A1 - Rabczuk, Timon T1 - Size dependent free flexural vibration behavior of functionally graded nanoplates JF - Computational Materials Science N2 - Size dependent free flexural vibration behavior of functionally graded nanoplates KW - Angewandte Mathematik KW - Strukturmechanik Y1 - 2012 SP - 74 EP - 80 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Jiang, Jin-Wu A1 - Zhao, Jun-Hua A1 - Zhou, K. A1 - Rabczuk, Timon T1 - Superior thermal conductivity and extremely high mechanical strength in polyethylene chains from ab initio calculation JF - Journal of Applied Physics N2 - The upper limit of the thermal conductivity and the mechanical strength are predicted for the polyethylene chain, by performing the ab initio calculation and applying the quantum mechanical non-equilibrium Green’s function approach. Specially, there are two main findings from our calculation: (1) the thermal conductivity can reach a high value of 310 Wm−1 K−1 in a 100 nm polyethylene chain at room temperature and the thermal conductivity increases with the length of the chain; (2) the Young’s modulus in the polyethylene chain is as high as 374.5 GPa, and the polyethylene chain can sustain 32.85%±0.05% (ultimate) strain before undergoing structural phase transition into gaseous ethylene. KW - Angewandte Mathematik KW - Strukturmechanik Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4729489 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Jiang, Jin-Wu A1 - Wang, Bing-Shen A1 - Rabczuk, Timon T1 - Acoustic and breathing phonon modes in bilayer graphene with Moire-acute patterns JF - Applied Physics Letters N2 - The lattice dynamics properties are investigated for twisting bilayer graphene. There are big jumps for the inter-layer potential at twisting angle θ=0° and 60°, implying the stability of Bernal-stacking and the instability of AA-stacking structures, while a long platform in [8,55]° indicates the ease of twisting bilayer graphene in this wide angle range. Significant frequency shifts are observed for the z breathing mode around θ=0° and 60°, while the frequency is a constant in a wide range [8,55]°. Using the z breathing mode, a mechanical nanoresonator is proposed to operate on a robust resonant frequency in terahertz range. KW - Angewandte Mathematik KW - Strukturmechanik Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4735246 ER -