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Briefly, the two basic questions that this research is supposed to answer are:
1. Howmuch fiber is needed and how fibers should be distributed through a fiber reinforced composite (FRC) structure in order to obtain the optimal and reliable structural response?
2. How do uncertainties influence the optimization results and reliability of the structure?
Giving answer to the above questions a double stage sequential optimization algorithm for finding the optimal content of short fiber reinforcements and their distribution in the composite structure, considering uncertain design parameters, is presented. In the first stage, the optimal amount of short fibers in a FRC structure with uniformly distributed fibers is conducted in the framework of a Reliability Based Design Optimization (RBDO) problem. Presented model considers material, structural and modeling uncertainties. In the second stage, the fiber distribution optimization (with the aim to further increase in structural reliability) is performed by defining a fiber distribution function through a Non-Uniform Rational BSpline (NURBS) surface. The advantages of using the NURBS surface as a fiber distribution function include: using the same data set for the optimization and analysis; high convergence rate due to the smoothness of the NURBS; mesh independency of the optimal layout; no need for any post processing technique and its non-heuristic nature. The output of stage 1 (the optimal fiber content for homogeneously distributed fibers) is considered as the input of stage 2. The output of stage 2 is the Reliability Index (b ) of the structure with the optimal fiber content and distribution.
First order reliability method (in order to approximate the limit state function) as well as different material models including Rule of Mixtures, Mori-Tanaka, energy-based approach and stochastic multi-scales are implemented in different examples. The proposed combined model is able to capture the role of available uncertainties in FRC structures through a computationally efficient algorithm using all sequential, NURBS and sensitivity based techniques. The methodology is successfully implemented for interfacial shear stress optimization in sandwich beams and also for optimization of the internal cooling channels in a ceramic matrix composite.
Finally, after some changes and modifications by combining Isogeometric Analysis, level set and point wise density mapping techniques, the computational framework is extended for topology optimization of piezoelectric / flexoelectric materials.
The gradual digitization in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry over the past fifty years led to an extremely heterogeneous software environment, which today is embodied by the multitude of different digital tools and proprietary data formats used by the many specialists contributing to the design process in a construction project. Though these projects become increasingly complex, the demands on financial efficiency and the completion within a tight schedule grow at the same time. The digital collaboration of project partners has been identified as one key issue in successfully dealing with these challenges. Yet currently, the numerous software applications and their respective individual views on the design process severely impede that collaboration.
An approach to establish a unified basis for the digital collaboration, regardless of the existing software heterogeneity, is a comprehensive digital building model contributed to by all projects partners. This type of data management known as building information modeling (BIM) has many benefits, yet its adoption is associated with many difficulties and thus, proceeds only slowly. One aspect in the field of conflicting requirements on such a digital model is the cooperation of architects and structural engineers. Traditionally, these two disciplines use different abstractions of reality for their models that in consequence lead to incompatible digital representations thereof.
The onset of isogeometric analysis (IGA) promised to ease the discrepancy in design and analysis model representations. Yet, that initial focus quickly shifted towards using these methods as a more powerful basis for numerical simulations. Furthermore, the isogeometric representation alone is not capable of solving the model abstraction problem. It is thus the intention of this work to contribute to an improved digital collaboration of architects and engineers by exploring an integrated analysis approach on the basis of an unified digital model and solid geometry expressed by splines. In the course of this work, an analysis framework is developed that utilizes such models to automatically conduct numerical simulations commonly required in construction projects. In essence, this allows to retrieve structural analysis results from BIM models in a fast and simple manner, thereby facilitating rapid design iterations and profound design feedback.
The BIM implementation Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) is reviewed with regard to its capabilities of representing the unified model. The current IFC schema strongly supports the use of redundant model data, a major pitfall in digital collaboration. Additionally, it does not allow to describe the geometry by volumetric splines. As the pursued approach builds upon a unique model for both, architectural and structural design, and furthermore requires solid geometry, necessary schema modifications are suggested.
Structural entities are modeled by volumetric NURBS patches, each of which constitutes an individual subdomain that, with regard to the analysis, is incompatible with the remaining full model. The resulting consequences for numerical simulation are elaborated in this work. The individual subdomains have to be weakly coupled, for which the mortar method is used. Different approaches to discretize the interface traction fields are implemented and their respective impact on the analysis results is evaluated. All necessary coupling conditions are automatically derived from the related geometry model.
The weak coupling procedure leads to a linear system of equations in saddle point form, which, owed to the volumetric modeling, is large in size and, the associated coefficient matrix has, due to the use of higher degree basis functions, a high bandwidth. The peculiarities of the system require adapted solution methods that generally cause higher numerical costs than the standard procedures for symmetric, positive-definite systems do. Different methods to solve the specific system are investigated and an efficient parallel algorithm is finally proposed.
When the structural analysis model is derived from the unified model in the BIM data, it does in general initially not meet the requirements on the discretization that are necessary to obtain sufficiently accurate analysis results. The consequently necessary patch refinements must be controlled automatically to allowfor an entirely automatic analysis procedure. For that purpose, an empirical refinement scheme based on the geometrical and possibly mechanical properties of the specific entities is proposed. The level of refinement may be selectively manipulated by the structural engineer in charge. Furthermore, a Zienkiewicz-Zhu type error estimator is adapted for the use with isogeometric analysis results. It is shown that also this estimator can be used to steer an adaptive refinement procedure.
Phase Field Modeling for Fracture with Applications to Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Materials
(2017)
The thesis presents an implementation including different applications of a variational-based approach for gradient type standard dissipative solids. Phase field model for brittle fracture is an application of the variational-based framework for gradient type solids. This model allows the prediction of different crack topologies and states. Of significant concern is the application of theoretical and numerical formulation of the phase field modeling into the commercial finite element software Abaqus in 2D and 3D. The fully coupled incremental variational formulation of phase field method is implemented by using the UEL and UMAT subroutines of Abaqus. The phase field method
considerably reduces the implementation complexity of fracture problems as it removes the need for numerical tracking of discontinuities in the displacement field that are characteristic of discrete crack methods. This is accomplished by replacing the sharp discontinuities with a scalar damage phase field representing the diffuse crack topology wherein the amount of diffusion is controlled by a regularization parameter. The nonlinear coupled system consisting of the linear momentum equation and a diffusion type equation governing the phase field evolution is solved simultaneously via a Newton-
Raphson approach. Post-processing of simulation results to be used as visualization
module is performed via an additional UMAT subroutine implemented in the standard Abaqus viewer.
In the same context, we propose a simple yet effective algorithm to initiate and propagate cracks in 2D geometries which is independent of both particular constitutive laws and specific element technology and dimension. It consists of a localization limiter in the form of the screened Poisson equation with, optionally, local mesh refinement. A staggered scheme for standard equilibrium and screened Cauchy equations is used. The remeshing part of the algorithm consists of a sequence of mesh subdivision and element erosion steps. Element subdivision is based on edge split operations using a
given constitutive quantity (either damage or void fraction). Mesh smoothing makes use of edge contraction as function of a given constitutive quantity such as the principal stress or void fraction. To assess the robustness and accuracy of this algorithm, we use both quasi-brittle benchmarks and ductile tests.
Furthermore, we introduce a computational approach regarding mechanical loading in microscale on an inelastically deforming composite material. The nanocomposites material of fully exfoliated clay/epoxy is shaped to predict macroscopic elastic and fracture related material parameters based on their fine–scale features. Two different configurations of polymer nanocomposites material (PNCs) have been studied. These configurations are fully bonded PNCs and PNCs with an interphase zone formation between the matrix and the clay reinforcement. The representative volume element of PNCs specimens with different clay weight contents, different aspect ratios, and different
interphase zone thicknesses are generated by adopting Python scripting. Different constitutive models are employed for the matrix, the clay platelets, and the interphase zones. The brittle fracture behavior of the epoxy matrix and the interphase zones material are modeled using the phase field approach, whereas the stiff silicate clay platelets of the composite are designated as a linear elastic material. The comprehensive study investigates the elastic and fracture behavior of PNCs composites, in addition to predict Young’s modulus, tensile strength, fracture toughness, surface energy dissipation, and cracks surface area in the composite for different material parameters, geometry, and interphase zones properties and thicknesses.
Matrix-free voxel-based finite element method for materials with heterogeneous microstructures
(2019)
Modern image detection techniques such as micro computer tomography
(μCT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) provide us with high resolution images of the microstructure of materials in a non-invasive and convenient way. They form the basis for the geometrical models of high-resolution analysis, so called image-based analysis.
However especially in 3D, discretizations of these models reach easily the size of 100 Mill. degrees of freedoms and require extensive hardware resources in terms of main memory and computing power to solve the numerical model. Consequently, the focus of this work is to combine and adapt numerical solution methods to reduce the memory demand first and then the computation time and therewith enable an execution of the image-based analysis on modern computer desktops. Hence, the numerical model is a straightforward grid discretization of the voxel-based (pixels with a third dimension) geometry which omits the boundary detection algorithms and allows reduced storage of the finite element data structure and a matrix-free solution algorithm.
This in turn reduce the effort of almost all applied grid-based solution techniques and results in memory efficient and numerically stable algorithms for the microstructural models. Two variants of the matrix-free algorithm are presented. The efficient iterative solution method of conjugate gradients is used with matrix-free applicable preconditioners such as the Jacobi and the especially suited multigrid method. The jagged material boundaries of the voxel-based mesh are smoothed through embedded boundary elements which contain different material information at the integration point and are integrated sub-cell wise though without additional boundary detection. The efficiency of the matrix-free methods can be retained.
This thesis addresses an adaptive higher-order method based on a Geometry Independent Field approximatTion(GIFT) of polynomial/rationals plines over hierarchical T-meshes(PHT/RHT-splines).
In isogeometric analysis, basis functions used for constructing geometric models in computer-aided design(CAD) are also employed to discretize the partial differential equations(PDEs) for numerical analysis. Non-uniform rational B-Splines(NURBS) are the most commonly used basis functions in CAD. However, they may not be ideal for numerical analysis where local refinement is required.
The alternative method GIFT deploys different splines for geometry and numerical analysis. NURBS are utilized for the geometry representation, while for the field solution, PHT/RHT-splines are used. PHT-splines not only inherit the useful properties of B-splines and NURBS, but also possess the capabilities of local refinement and hierarchical structure. The smooth basis function properties of PHT-splines make them suitable for analysis purposes. While most problems considered in isogeometric analysis can be solved efficiently when the solution is smooth, many non-trivial problems have rough solutions. For example, this can be caused by the presence of re-entrant corners in the domain. For such problems, a tensor-product basis (as in the case of NURBS) is less suitable for resolving the singularities that appear since refinement propagates throughout the computational domain. Hierarchical bases and local refinement (as in the case of PHT-splines) allow for a more efficient way to resolve these singularities by adding more degrees of freedom where they are necessary. In order to drive the adaptive refinement, an efficient recovery-based error estimator is proposed in this thesis. The estimator produces a recovery solution which is a more accurate approximation than the computed numerical solution. Several two- and three-dimensional numerical investigations with PHT-splines of higher order and continuity prove that the proposed method is capable of obtaining results with higher accuracy, better convergence, fewer degrees of freedom and less computational cost than NURBS for smooth solution problems. The adaptive GIFT method utilizing PHT-splines with the recovery-based error estimator is used for solutions with discontinuities or singularities where adaptive local refinement in particular domains of interest achieves higher accuracy with fewer degrees of freedom. This method also proves that it can handle complicated multi-patch domains for two- and three-dimensional problems outperforming uniform refinement in terms of degrees of freedom and computational cost.
Encapsulation-based self-healing concrete (SHC) is the most promising technique for providing a self-healing mechanism to concrete. This is due to its capacity to heal fractures effectively without human interventions, extending the operational life and lowering maintenance costs. The healing mechanism is created by embedding capsules containing the healing agent inside the concrete. The healing agent will be released once the capsules are fractured and the healing occurs in the vicinity of the damaged part. The healing efficiency of the SHC is still not clear and depends on several factors; in the case of microcapsules SHC the fracture of microcapsules is the most important aspect to release the healing agents and hence heal the cracks. This study contributes to verifying the healing efficiency of SHC and the fracture mechanism of the microcapsules. Extended finite element method (XFEM) is a flexible, and powerful discrete crack method that allows crack propagation without the requirement for re-meshing and has been shown high accuracy for modeling fracture in concrete. In this thesis, a computational fracture modeling approach of Encapsulation-based SHC is proposed based on the XFEM and cohesive surface technique (CS) to study the healing efficiency and the potential of fracture and debonding of the microcapsules or the solidified healing agents from the concrete matrix as well. The concrete matrix and a microcapsule shell both are modeled by the XFEM and combined together by CS. The effects of the healed-crack length, the interfacial fracture properties, and microcapsule size on the load carrying capability and fracture pattern of the SHC have been studied. The obtained results are compared to those obtained from the zero thickness cohesive element approach to demonstrate the significant accuracy and the validity of the proposed simulation. The present fracture simulation is developed to study the influence of the capsular clustering on the fracture mechanism by varying the contact surface area of the CS between the microcapsule shell and the concrete matrix. The proposed fracture simulation is expanded to 3D simulations to validate the 2D computational simulations and to estimate the accuracy difference ratio between 2D and 3D simulations. In addition, a proposed design method is developed to design the size of the microcapsules consideration of a sufficient volume of healing agent to heal the expected crack width. This method is based on the configuration of the unit cell (UC), Representative Volume Element (RVE), Periodic Boundary Conditions (PBC), and associated them to the volume fraction (Vf) and the crack width as variables. The proposed microcapsule design is verified through computational fracture simulations.
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.