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Finite Element Simulations of dynamically excited structures are mainly influenced by the mass, stiffness, and damping properties of the system, as well as external loads. The prediction quality of dynamic simulations of vibration-sensitive components depends significantly on the use of appropriate damping models. Damping phenomena have a decisive influence on the vibration amplitude and the frequencies of the vibrating structure. However, developing realistic damping models is challenging due to the multiple sources that cause energy dissipation, such as material damping, different types of friction, or various interactions with the environment.
This thesis focuses on thermoelastic damping, which is the main cause of material damping in homogeneous materials. The effect is caused by temperature changes due to mechanical strains. In vibrating structures, temperature gradients arise in adjacent tension and compression areas. Depending on the vibration frequency, they result in heat flows, leading to increased entropy and the irreversible transformation of mechanical energy into thermal energy.
The central objective of this thesis is the development of efficient simulation methods to incorporate thermoelastic damping in finite element analyses based on modal superposition. The thermoelastic loss factor is derived from the structure's mechanical mode shapes and eigenfrequencies. In subsequent analyses that are performed in the time and frequency domain, it is applied as modal damping.
Two approaches are developed to determine the thermoelastic loss in thin-walled plate structures, as well as three-dimensional solid structures. The realistic representation of the dissipation effects is verified by comparing the simulation results with experimentally determined data. Therefore, an experimental setup is developed to measure material damping, excluding other sources of energy dissipation.
The three-dimensional solid approach is based on the determination of the generated entropy and therefore the generated heat per vibration cycle, which is a measure for thermoelastic loss in relation to the total strain energy. For thin plate structures, the amount of bending energy in a modal deformation is calculated and summarized in the so-called Modal Bending Factor (MBF). The highest amount of thermoelastic loss occurs in the state of pure bending. Therefore, the MBF enables a quantitative classification of the mode shapes concerning the thermoelastic damping potential.
The results of the developed simulations are in good agreement with the experimental results and are appropriate to predict thermoelastic loss factors. Both approaches are based on modal superposition with the advantage of a high computational efficiency. Overall, the modeling of thermoelastic damping represents an important component in a comprehensive damping model, which is necessary to perform realistic simulations of vibration processes.
In recent years, lightweight materials, such as polymer composite materials (PNCs) have been studied and developed due to their excellent physical and chemical properties. Structures composed of these composite materials are widely used in aerospace engineering structures, automotive components, and electrical devices. The excellent and outstanding mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties of Carbon nanotube (CNT) make it an ideal filler to strengthen polymer materials’ comparable properties. The heat transfer of composite materials has very promising engineering applications in many fields, especially in electronic devices and energy storage equipment. It is essential in high-energy density systems since electronic components need heat dissipation functionality. Or in other words, in electronic devices the generated heat should ideally be dissipated by light and small heat sinks.
Polymeric composites consist of fillers embedded in a polymer matrix, the first ones will significantly affect the overall (macroscopic) performance of the material. There are many common carbon-based fillers such as single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT), multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT), carbon nanobuds (CNB), fullerene, and graphene. Additives inside the matrix have become a popular subject for researchers. Some extraordinary characters, such as high-performance load, lightweight design, excellent chemical resistance, easy processing, and heat transfer, make the design of polymeric nanotube composites (PNCs) flexible. Due to the reinforcing effects with different fillers on composite materials, it has a higher degree of freedom and can be designed for the structure according to specific applications’ needs. As already stated, our research focus will be on SWCNT enhanced PNCs. Since experiments are timeconsuming, sometimes expensive and cannot shed light into phenomena taking place for instance at the interfaces/interphases of composites, they are often complemented through theoretical and computational analysis.
While most studies are based on deterministic approaches, there is a comparatively lower number of stochastic methods accounting for uncertainties in the input parameters. In deterministic models, the output of the model is fully determined by the parameter values and the initial conditions. However, uncertainties in the input parameters such as aspect ratio, volume fraction, thermal properties of fiber and matrix need to be taken into account for reliable predictions. In this research, a stochastic multiscale method is provided to study the influence of numerous uncertain input parameters on the thermal conductivity of the composite. Therefore, a hierarchical multi-scale method based on computational homogenization is presented in to predict the macroscopic thermal conductivity based on the fine-scale structure. In order to study the inner mechanism, we use the finite element method and employ surrogate models to conduct a Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA). The SA is performed in order to quantify the influence of the conductivity of the fiber, matrix, Kapitza resistance, volume fraction and aspect ratio on the macroscopic conductivity. Therefore, we compute first-order and total-effect sensitivity indices with different surrogate models.
As stochastic multiscale models are computational expensive, surrogate approaches are commonly exploited. With the emergence of high performance computing and artificial intelligence, machine learning has become a popular modeling tool for numerous applications. Machine learning (ML) is commonly used in regression and maps data through specific rules with algorithms to build input and output models. They are particularly useful for nonlinear input-output relationships when sufficient data is available. ML has also been used in the design of new materials and multiscale analysis. For instance, Artificial neural networks and integrated learning seem to be ideally for such a task. They can theoretically simulate any non-linear relationship through the connection of neurons. Mapping relationships are employed to carry out data-driven simulations of inputs and outputs in stochastic modeling.
This research aims to develop a stochastic multi-scale computational models of PNCs in heat transfer. Multi-scale stochastic modeling with uncertainty analysis and machine learning methods consist of the following components:
-Uncertainty Analysis. A surrogate based global sensitivity analysis is coupled with a hierarchical multi-scale method employing computational homogenization. The effect of the conductivity of the fibers and the matrix, the Kapitza resistance, volume fraction and aspect ratio on the ’macroscopic’ conductivity of the composite is systematically studied. All selected surrogate models yield consistently the conclusions that the most influential input parameters are the aspect ratio followed by the volume fraction. The Kapitza Resistance has no significant effect on the thermal conductivity of the PNCs. The most accurate surrogate model in terms of the R2 value is the moving least square (MLS).
-Hybrid Machine Learning Algorithms. A combination of artificial neural network (ANN) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) is applied to estimate the relationship between variable input and output parameters. The ANN is used for modeling the composite while PSO improves the prediction performance through an optimized global minimum search. The thermal conductivity of the fibers and the matrix, the kapitza resistance, volume fraction and aspect ratio are selected as input parameters. The output is the macroscopic (homogenized) thermal conductivity of the composite. The results show that the PSO significantly improves the predictive ability of this hybrid intelligent algorithm, which outperforms traditional neural networks.
-Stochastic Integrated Machine Learning. A stochastic integrated machine learning based multiscale approach for the prediction of the macroscopic thermal conductivity in PNCs is developed. Seven types of machine learning models are exploited in this research, namely Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Regression Tree (RT), Bagging Tree (Bag), Random Forest (RF), Gradient Boosting Machine (GBM) and Cubist. They are used as components of stochastic modeling to construct the relationship between the variable of the inputs’ uncertainty and the macroscopic thermal conductivity of PNCs. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is used for hyper-parameter tuning to find the global optimal values leading to a significant reduction in the computational cost. The advantages and disadvantages of various methods are also analyzed in terms of computing time and model complexity to finally give a recommendation for the applicability of different models.
Isogeometric analysis (IGA) is a numerical method for solving partial differential equations (PDEs), which was introduced with the aim of integrating finite element analysis with computer-aided design systems. The main idea of the method is to use the same spline basis functions which describe the geometry in CAD systems for the approximation of solution fields in the finite element method (FEM). Originally, NURBS which is a standard technology employed in CAD systems was adopted as basis functions in IGA but there were several variants of IGA using other technologies such as T-splines, PHT splines, and subdivision surfaces as basis functions. In general, IGA offers two key advantages over classical FEM: (i) by describing the CAD geometry exactly using smooth, high-order spline functions, the mesh generation process is simplified and the interoperability between CAD and FEM is improved, (ii) IGA can be viewed as a high-order finite element method which offers basis functions with high inter-element continuity and therefore can provide a primal variational formulation of high-order PDEs in a straightforward fashion. The main goal of this thesis is to further advance isogeometric analysis by exploiting these major advantages, namely precise geometric modeling and the use of smooth high-order splines as basis functions, and develop robust computational methods for problems with complex geometry and/or complex multi-physics.
As the first contribution of this thesis, we leverage the precise geometric modeling of isogeometric analysis and propose a new method for its coupling with meshfree discretizations. We exploit the strengths of both methods by using IGA to provide a smooth, geometrically-exact surface discretization of the problem domain boundary, while the Reproducing Kernel Particle Method (RKPM) discretization is used to provide the volumetric discretization of the domain interior. The coupling strategy is based upon the higher-order consistency or reproducing conditions that are directly imposed in the physical domain. The resulting coupled method enjoys several favorable features: (i) it preserves the geometric exactness of IGA, (ii) it circumvents the need for global volumetric parameterization of the problem domain, (iii) it achieves arbitrary-order approximation accuracy while preserving higher-order smoothness of the discretization. Several numerical examples are solved to show the optimal convergence properties of the coupled IGA–RKPM formulation, and to demonstrate its effectiveness in constructing volumetric discretizations for complex-geometry objects.
As for the next contribution, we exploit the use of smooth, high-order spline basis functions in IGA to solve high-order surface PDEs governing the morphological evolution of vesicles. These governing equations are often consisted of geometric PDEs, high-order PDEs on stationary or evolving surfaces, or a combination of them. We propose an isogeometric formulation for solving these PDEs. In the context of geometric PDEs, we consider phase-field approximations of mean curvature flow and Willmore flow problems and numerically study the convergence behavior of isogeometric analysis for these problems. As a model problem for high-order PDEs on stationary surfaces, we consider the Cahn–Hilliard equation on a sphere, where the surface is modeled using a phase-field approach. As for the high-order PDEs on evolving surfaces, a phase-field model of a deforming multi-component vesicle, which consists of two fourth-order nonlinear PDEs, is solved using the isogeometric analysis in a primal variational framework. Through several numerical examples in 2D, 3D and axisymmetric 3D settings, we show the robustness of IGA for solving the considered phase-field models.
Finally, we present a monolithic, implicit formulation based on isogeometric analysis and generalized-alpha time integration for simulating hydrodynamics of vesicles according to a phase-field model. Compared to earlier works, the number of equations of the phase-field model which need to be solved is reduced by leveraging high continuity of NURBS functions, and the algorithm is extended to 3D settings. We use residual-based variational multi-scale method (RBVMS) for solving Navier–Stokes equations, while the rest of PDEs in the phase-field model are treated using a standard Galerkin-based IGA. We introduce the resistive immersed surface (RIS) method into the formulation which can be employed for an implicit description of complex geometries using a diffuse-interface approach. The implementation highlights the robustness of the RBVMS method for Navier–Stokes equations of incompressible flows with non-trivial localized forcing terms including bending and tension forces of the vesicle. The potential of the phase-field model and isogeometric analysis for accurate simulation of a variety of fluid-vesicle interaction problems in 2D and 3D is demonstrated.
Identification of modal parameters of a space frame structure is a complex assignment due to a large number of degrees of freedom, close natural frequencies, and different vibrating mechanisms. Research has been carried out on the modal identification of rather simple truss structures. So far, less attention has been given to complex three-dimensional truss structures. This work develops a vibration-based methodology for determining modal information of three-dimensional space truss structures. The method uses a relatively complex space truss structure for its verification. Numerical modelling of the system gives modal information about the expected vibration behaviour. The identification process involves closely spaced modes that are characterised by local and global vibration mechanisms. To distinguish between local and global vibrations of the system, modal strain energies are used as an indicator. The experimental validation, which incorporated a modal analysis employing the stochastic subspace identification method, has confirmed that considering relatively high model orders is required to identify specific mode shapes. Especially in the case of the determination of local deformation modes of space truss members, higher model orders have to be taken into account than in the modal identification of most other types of structures.
As an optimization that starts from a randomly selected structure generally does not guarantee reasonable optimality, the use of a systemic approach, named the ground structure, is widely accepted in steel-made truss and frame structural design. However, in the case of reinforced concrete (RC) structural optimization, because of the orthogonal orientation of structural members, randomly chosen or architect-sketched framing is used. Such a one-time fixed layout trend, in addition to its lack of a systemic approach, does not necessarily guarantee optimality. In this study, an approach for generating a candidate ground structure to be used for cost or weight minimization of 3D RC building structures with included slabs is developed. A multiobjective function at the floor optimization stage and a single objective function at the frame optimization stage are considered. A particle swarm optimization (PSO) method is employed for selecting the optimal ground structure. This method enables generating a simple, yet potential, real-world representation of topologically preoptimized ground structure while both structural and main architectural requirements are considered. This is supported by a case study for different floor domain sizes.
The study presents a Machine Learning (ML)-based framework designed to forecast the stress-strain relationship of arc-direct energy deposited mild steel. Based on microstructural characteristics previously extracted using microscopy and X-ray diffraction, approximately 1000 new parameter sets are generated by applying the Latin Hypercube Sampling Method (LHSM). For each parameter set, a Representative Volume Element (RVE) is synthetically created via Voronoi Tessellation. Input raw data for ML-based algorithms comprises these parameter sets or RVE-images, while output raw data includes their corresponding stress-strain relationships calculated after a Finite Element (FE) procedure. Input data undergoes preprocessing involving standardization, feature selection, and image resizing. Similarly, the stress-strain curves, initially unsuitable for training traditional ML algorithms, are preprocessed using cubic splines and occasionally Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The later part of the study focuses on employing multiple ML algorithms, utilizing two main models. The first model predicts stress-strain curves based on microstructural parameters, while the second model does so solely from RVE images. The most accurate prediction yields a Root Mean Squared Error of around 5 MPa, approximately 1% of the yield stress. This outcome suggests that ML models offer precise and efficient methods for characterizing dual-phase steels, establishing a framework for accurate results in material analysis.