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Many structures in different engineering applications suffer from cracking. In order to make reliable prognosis about the serviceability of those structures it is of utmost importance to identify cracks as precisely as possible by non-destructive testing. A novel approach (XIGA), which combines the Isogeometric Analysis (IGA) and the Extended Finite Element Method (XFEM) is used for the forward problem, namely the analysis of a cracked material, see [1]. Applying the NURBS (Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline) based approach from IGA together with the XFEM allows to describe effectively arbitrarily shaped cracks and avoids the necessity of remeshing during the crack identification problem. We want to exploit these advantages for the inverse problem of detecting existing cracks by non-destructive testing, see e.g. [2]. The quality of the reconstructed cracks however depends on two major issues, namely the quality of the measured data (measurement error) and the discretization of the crack model. The first one will be taken into account by applying regularizing methods with a posteriori stopping criteria. The second one is critical in the sense that too few degrees of freedom, i.e. the number of control points of the NURBS, do not allow for a precise description of the crack. An increased number of control points, however, increases the number of unknowns in the inverse analysis and intensifies the ill-posedness. The trade-off between accuracy and stability is aimed to be found by applying an inverse multilevel algorithm [3, 4] where the identification is started with short knot vectors which successively will be enlarged during the identification process.
This study contributes to the identification of coupled THM constitutive model parameters via back analysis against information-rich experiments. A sampling based back analysis approach is proposed comprising both the model parameter identification and the assessment of the reliability of identified model parameters. The results obtained in the context of buffer elements indicate that sensitive parameter estimates generally obey the normal distribution. According to the sensitivity of the parameters and the probability distribution of the samples we can provide confidence intervals for the estimated parameters and thus allow a qualitative estimation on the identified parameters which are in future work used as inputs for prognosis computations of buffer elements. These elements play e.g. an important role in the design of nuclear waste repositories.
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.
From the design experiences of arch dams in the past, it has significant practical value to carry out the shape optimization of arch dams, which can fully make use of material characteristics and reduce the cost of constructions. Suitable variables need to be chosen to formulate the objective function, e.g. to minimize the total volume of the arch dam. Additionally a series of constraints are derived and a reasonable and convenient penalty function has been formed, which can easily enforce the characteristics of constraints and optimal design. For the optimization method, a Genetic Algorithm is adopted to perform a global search. Simultaneously, ANSYS is used to do the mechanical analysis under the coupling of thermal and hydraulic loads. One of the constraints of the newly designed dam is to fulfill requirements on the structural safety. Therefore, a reliability analysis is applied to offer a good decision supporting for matters concerning predictions of both safety and service life of the arch dam. By this, the key factors which would influence the stability and safety of arch dam significantly can be acquired, and supply a good way to take preventive measures to prolong ate the service life of an arch dam and enhances the safety of structure.