Universitätsbibliothek
Weimar Open Access

Yongzheng Zhang

• Material failure can be tackled by so-called nonlocal models, which introduce an intrinsic length scale into the formulation and, in the case of material failure, restore the well-posedness of the underlying boundary value problem or initial boundary value problem. Among nonlocal models, peridynamics (PD) has attracted a lot of attention as it allows the natural transition from continuum toMaterial failure can be tackled by so-called nonlocal models, which introduce an intrinsic length scale into the formulation and, in the case of material failure, restore the well-posedness of the underlying boundary value problem or initial boundary value problem. Among nonlocal models, peridynamics (PD) has attracted a lot of attention as it allows the natural transition from continuum to discontinue and thus allows modeling of discrete cracks without the need to describe and track the crack topology, which has been a major obstacle in traditional discrete crack approaches. This is achieved by replacing the divergence of the Cauchy stress tensor through an integral over so-called bond forces, which account for the interaction of particles. A quasi-continuum approach is then used to calibrate the material parameters of the bond forces, i.e., equating the PD energy with the energy of a continuum. One major issue for the application of PD to general complex problems is that they are limited to fairly simple material behavior and pure mechanical problems based on explicit time integration. PD has been extended to other applications but losing simultaneously its simplicity and ease in modeling material failure. Furthermore, conventional PD suffers from instability and hourglass modes that require stabilization. It also requires the use of constant horizon sizes, which drastically reduces its computational efficiency. The latter issue was resolved by the so-called dual-horizon peridynamics (DH-PD) formulation and the introduction of the duality of horizons. Within the nonlocal operator method (NOM), the concept of nonlocality is further extended and can be considered a generalization of DH-PD. Combined with the energy functionals of various physical models, the nonlocal forms based on the dual-support concept can be derived. In addition, the variation of the energy functional allows implicit formulations of the nonlocal theory. While traditional integral equations are formulated in an integral domain, the dual-support approaches are based on dual integral domains. One prominent feature of NOM is its compatibility with variational and weighted residual methods. The NOM yields a direct numerical implementation based on the weighted residual method for many physical problems without the need for shape functions. Only the definition of the energy or boundary value problem is needed to drastically facilitate the implementation. The nonlocal operator plays an equivalent role to the derivatives of the shape functions in meshless methods and finite element methods (FEM). Based on the variational principle, the residual and the tangent stiffness matrix can be obtained with ease by a series of matrix multiplications. In addition, NOM can be used to derive many nonlocal models in strong form. The principal contributions of this dissertation are the implementation and application of NOM, and also the development of approaches for dealing with fractures within the NOM, mostly for dynamic fractures. The primary coverage and results of the dissertation are as follows: -The first/higher-order implicit NOM and explicit NOM, including a detailed description of the implementation, are presented. The NOM is based on so-called support, dual-support, nonlocal operators, and an operate energy functional ensuring stability. The nonlocal operator is a generalization of the conventional differential operators. Combining with the method of weighted residuals and variational principles, NOM establishes the residual and tangent stiffness matrix of operate energy functional through some simple matrix without the need of shape functions as in other classical computational methods such as FEM. NOM only requires the definition of the energy drastically simplifying its implementation. For the sake of conciseness, the implementation in this chapter is focused on linear elastic solids only, though the NOM can handle more complex nonlinear problems. An explicit nonlocal operator method for the dynamic analysis of elasticity solid problems is also presented. The explicit NOM avoids the calculation of the tangent stiffness matrix as in the implicit NOM model. The explicit scheme comprises the Verlet-velocity algorithm. The NOM can be very flexible and efficient for solving partial differential equations (PDEs). It's also quite easy for readers to use the NOM and extend it to solve other complicated physical phenomena described by one or a set of PDEs. Several numerical examples are presented to show the capabilities of this method. -A nonlocal operator method for the dynamic analysis of (thin) Kirchhoff plates is proposed. The nonlocal Hessian operator is derived from a second-order Taylor series expansion. NOM is higher-order continuous, which is exploited for thin plate analysis that requires $C^1$ continuity. The nonlocal dynamic governing formulation and operator energy functional for Kirchhoff plates are derived from a variational principle. The Verlet-velocity algorithm is used for time discretization. After confirming the accuracy of the nonlocal Hessian operator, several numerical examples are simulated by the nonlocal dynamic Kirchhoff plate formulation. -A nonlocal fracture modeling is developed and applied to the simulation of quasi-static and dynamic fractures using the NOM. The phase field's nonlocal weak and associated strong forms are derived from a variational principle. The NOM requires only the definition of energy. We present both a nonlocal implicit phase field model and a nonlocal explicit phase field model for fracture; the first approach is better suited for quasi-static fracture problems, while the key application of the latter one is dynamic fracture. To demonstrate the performance of the underlying approach, several benchmark examples for quasi-static and dynamic fracture are solved.…