Boundary element method for finite elasticity

This paper describes some integral formulations and implementations of a Boundary Element Method to solve two- and three-dimensional finite deformation problems of rubber-like materials. The integral equations are formulated in terms of unknown incremental displacement and total boundary traction fields, or alternatively in terms of the incremental displacement and incremental boundary traction fields. The elastic material is either compressible or incompressible with given constitutive equations. Both formulations are implemented and tested. The uniaxial elongation and simple shear deformations of a model material are successfully simulated by both formulations. Some non-trivial examples are performed using the first formulation.     

Boundary knot method for the Cauchy problem associated with the inhomogeneous Helmholtz equation

In this paper, the boundary knot method is extended to the solution of inhomogeneous equations, and it is applied to the Cauchy problem associated with the inhomogeneous Helmholtz equation. Here, we assume that the boundary condition is specified only on a part of the boundary, and the boundary conditions on the remaining part of the boundary are to be determined with the assistance of additional data. Since the resulting matrix equation is highly ill-conditioned, a regularized solution is obtained by employing the truncated singular value decomposition to solve the matrix equation arising from the boundary knot method, with the regularization parameter determined by the L-curve method. Numerical results are presented for several examples with smooth and piecewise smooth boundaries. The numerical verification shows that the proposed numerical scheme is accurate, stable with respect to data noise, and convergent with respect to decreasing the amount of noise in the data.     

Boundary element solution for half-space elasticity or stokes problem with a no-slip boundary

We report an implementation of the Boundary Element Method (BEM) for half-space elasticity or Stokes problems with a plane interface (the boundary of the half space). With a proper choice of the singularity solution this plane interface, on which the displacement or velocity vector is zero, does not need to be discretized. For a large class of problems involving translating or rotating bodies a simplification of the boundary element formulation is possible, with a resulting improvement in the accuracy of the numerical results. The three-dimensional boundary element program was tested with the moving sphere problem and was found to be satisfactory in all cases.     

An alternating iterative algorithm for the Cauchy problem in anisotropic elasticity

The alternating iterative algorithm proposed by Kozlov et al. [An iterative method for solving the Cauchy problem for elliptic equations. USSR Comput Math Math Phys 1991;31:45–52] for obtaining approximate solutions to the Cauchy problem in two-dimensional anisotropic elasticity is analysed and numerically implemented using the boundary element method (BEM). The ill-posedness of this inverse boundary value problem is overcome by employing an efficient regularising stopping. The numerical results confirm that the iterative BEM produces a convergent and stable numerical solution with respect to increasing the number of boundary elements and decreasing the amount of noise added into the input data.     

A new boundary element method formulation for three dimensional problems in linear elasticity

Summary A new boundary element method (BEM) formulation for planar problems of linear elasticity has been proposed recently [6]. This formulation uses a kernel which has a weaker singularity relative to the corresponding kernel in the standard formulation. The most important advantage of the new formulation, relative to the standard one, is that it delivers stresses accurately at internal points that are extremely close to the boundary of a body. A corresponding BEM formulation for three dimensional problems of linear elasticity is presented in this paper. This formulation is derived through the use of Stokes' theorem and has kernels which are only 1/r singular (wherer is the distance between a source and a field point) for the displacement equation. The standard BEM formulation for three-dimensional elasticity problems has a kernel which is 1/r ² singular.With 2 Figures     

On the evaluation of hyper-singular integrals arising in the boundary element method for linear elasticity

The boundary element method (BEM) for linear elasticity in its curent usage is based on the boundary integral equation for displacements. The stress field in the interior of the body is computed by differentiating the displacement field at the source point in the BEM formulation, via the strain field. However, at the boundary, this method gives rise to a hypersingular integral relation which becomes numerically intractable. A novel approach is presented here, where hyper-singular kernels for stresses on the boundary are made numerically tractable through the imposition of certain equilibrated displacement modes. Numerical results are also presented for benchmark problems, to illustrate the efficacy of the present approach. Solutions are compared to the commonly used boundary stress algorithm wherein the boundary stresses are computed from known boundary tractions, and derivatives of known displacements tangential to the boundary. An extension of this approach to solve linear elasticity problems using the traction boundary integral equation (TBIE) is also discussed.     

Boundary element formulation for plane problems in couple stress elasticity

Couple‐stresses are introduced to account for the microstructure of a material within the framework of continuum mechanics. Linear isotropic versions of such materials possess a characteristic material length l that becomes increasingly important as problem dimensions shrink to that level (e.g., as the radius a of a critical hole reduces to a size comparable to l). Consequently, this size‐dependent elastic theory is essential to understand the behavior at micro‐ and nano‐scales and to bridge the atomistic and classical continuum theories. Here we develop an integral representation for two‐dimensional boundary value problems in the newly established fully determinate theory of isotropic couple stress elastic media. The resulting boundary‐only formulation involves displacements, rotations, force‐tractions and moment‐tractions as primary variables. Details on the corresponding numerical implementation within a boundary element method are then provided, with emphasis on kernel singularities and numerical quadrature. Afterwards the new formulation is applied to several computational examples to validate the approach and to explore the consequences of size‐dependent couple stress elasticity. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Boundary element method homogenization of the periodic linear elastic fiber composites

The paper presented is devoted to the Boundary Element Method based homogenization of the periodic transversely isotropic linear elastic fiber-reinforced composites. The composite material under consideration has deterministically defined elastic properties while its components are perfectly bonded. To have a good comparison with the FEM-based computational techniques used previously, the additional Finite Element discretization is presented and compared numerically against BEM homogenization implementation on the example of engineering glass–epoxy composite. The homogenization method proposed has rather general characteristics and, as it is shown, can be easily extended on n-component composites. On the contrary, we can consider and homogenize the heterogeneous media with randomly defined material properties using Monte-Carlo simulation technique or second order perturbation second probabilistic moment approach.     

A semi‐analytical curved element for linear elasticity based on the scaled boundary finite element method

This work introduces a semi‐analytical formulation for the simulation and modeling of curved structures based on the scaled boundary finite element method (SBFEM). This approach adapts the fundamental idea of the SBFEM concept to scale a boundary to describe a geometry. Until now, scaling in SBFEM has exclusively been performed along a straight coordinate that enlarges, shrinks, or shifts a given boundary. In this novel approach, scaling is based on a polar or cylindrical coordinate system such that a boundary is shifted along a curved scaling direction. The derived formulations are used to compute the static and dynamic stiffness matrices of homogeneous curved structures. The resulting elements can be coupled to general SBFEM or FEM domains. For elastodynamic problems, computations are performed in the frequency domain. Results of this work are validated using the global matrix method and standard finite element analysis. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Efficient recovery-based error estimation for the smoothed finite element method for smooth and singular linear elasticity

An error control technique aimed to assess the quality of smoothed finite element approximations is presented in this paper. Finite element techniques based on strain smoothing appeared in 2007 were shown to provide significant advantages compared to conventional finite element approximations. In particular, a widely cited strength of such methods is improved accuracy for the same computational cost. Yet, few attempts have been made to directly assess the quality of the results obtained during the simulation by evaluating an estimate of the discretization error. Here we propose a recovery type error estimator based on an enhanced recovery technique. The salient features of the recovery are: enforcement of local equilibrium and, for singular problems a “smooth + singular” decomposition of the recovered stress. We evaluate the proposed estimator on a number of test cases from linear elastic structural mechanics and obtain efficient error estimations whose effectivities, both at local and global levels, are improved compared to recovery procedures not implementing these features.     

On finite element formulations for nearly incompressible linear elasticity

In this paper we present a mixed stabilized finite element formulation that does not lock and also does not exhibit unphysical oscillations near the incompressible limit. The new mixed formulation is based on a multiscale variational principle and is presented in two different forms. In the first form the displacement field is decomposed into two scales, coarse-scale and fine-scale, and the fine-scale variables are eliminated at the element level by the static condensation technique. The second form is obtained by simplifying the first form, and eliminating the fine-scale variables analytically yet retaining their effect that results with additional (stabilization) terms. We also derive, in a consistent manner, an expression for the stabilization parameter. This derivation also proves the equivalence between the classical mixed formulation with bubbles and the Galerkin least-squares type formulations for the equations of linear elasticity. We also compare the performance of this new mixed stabilized formulation with other popular finite element formulations by performing numerical simulations on three well known test problems.     

Conjugate gradient-boundary element solution to the Cauchy problem for Helmholtz-type equations

 In this paper, an iterative algorithm based on the conjugate gradient method (CGM) in combination with the boundary element method (BEM) for obtaining stable approximate solutions to the Cauchy problem for Helmholtz-type equations is analysed. An efficient regularising stopping criterion for CGM proposed by Nemirovskii [25] is employed. The numerical results obtained confirm that the CGM + BEM produces a convergent and stable numerical solution with respect to increasing the number of boundary elements and decreasing the amount of noise added into the input data. Received: 5 November 2002 / Accepted: 5 March 2003 L. Marin would like to acknowledge the financial support received from the EPSRC. The authors would like to thank Professor Dinh Nho Hào and Dr. Thomas Johansson for some useful discussions and suggestions.     

A new singular finite element in linear elasticity

In this paper we consider the finite element treatment of the strain singularities of linear elastic fracture. We define two — new singular finite elements obtained from standard quadratic Serendipity and Lagrange elements, and we analyse their approximate strain forms. It is demonstrated that both elements can be applied in linear elastic fracture.     

Finite element method for orthotropic micropolar elasticity

The total potential energy for a body composed of an anisotropic micropolar linear elastic material is developed and used to formulate a displacement type finite element method of analysis. As an example of this formulation triangular plane stress (and plane couple stress) elements are used to analyze several problems. The program is verified by computing the stress concentration around a hole in an isotropic micropolar material for which an exact analytical solution exists. Several anisotropic material cases are presented which demonstrate the dependence of the stress concentration factor on the micropolar material parameters.     

A coupled complex boundary method for the Cauchy problem

Considered in this paper is a Cauchy problem governed by an elliptic partial differential equation. In the Cauchy problem, one wants to recover the unknown Neumann and Dirichlet data on a part of the boundary from the measured Neumann and Dirichlet data, usually contaminated with noise, on the remaining part of the boundary. The Cauchy problem is an inverse problem with severe ill-posedness. In this paper, a coupled complex boundary method (CCBM), originally proposed in [Cheng XL, Gong RF, Han W, et al. A novel coupled complex boundary method for solving inverse source problems. Inverse Prob. 2014;30:055002], is applied to solve the Cauchy problem stably. With the CCBM, all the data, including the known and unknown ones on the boundary are used in a complex Robin boundary on the whole boundary. As a result, the Cauchy problem is transferred into a complex Robin boundary problem of finding the unknown data such that the imaginary part of the solution equals zero in the domain. Then the Tikhonov regularization is applied to the resulting new formulation. Some theoretical analysis is performed on the CCBM-based Tikhonov regularization framework. Moreover, through the adjoint technique, a simple solver is proposed to compute the regularized solution. The finite-element method is used for the discretization. Numerical results are given to show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.     

A three-dimensional parabolic punch problem in linear elasticity

In this paper an analytic solution for a three-dimensional contact problem, in linear elasticity, is constructed through the separation of Laplace's equation in paraboloidal coordinates. A rigid punch under normal loading is applied to an isotropic elastic medium occupying an infinite half-space where the contact region is parabolic and the punch profile is prescribed. This treatment allows for a general punch profile provided it is physically reasonable so as to ensure the convergence of the solution.     

Boundary element method for thermoelastoplastic problems

In this paper, we present the boundary integral formulation for inelastic stationary thermoelasticity including thermally induced non-homogeneity. Generally, the unique BEM formulation for crack problems is achieved by using the traction boundary integral equations which are now considered in a non-singular form. Both the two- and three-dimensional boundary value problems are analysed simultaneously. Numerical examples for 2-D problems are presented, in order to illustrate the suitability of this boundary element approach in the inelastic thermoelasticity.     

A hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin method for linear elasticity

This paper describes the application of the so‐called hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin (HDG) method to linear elasticity problems. The method has three significant features. The first is that the only globally coupled degrees of freedom are those of an approximation of the displacement defined solely on the faces of the elements. The corresponding stiffness matrix is symmetric, positive definite, and possesses a block‐wise sparse structure that allows for a very efficient implementation of the method. The second feature is that, when polynomials of degree k are used to approximate the displacement and the stress, both variables converge with the optimal order of k+1 for any k?0. The third feature is that, by using an element‐by‐element post‐processing, a new approximate displacement can be obtained that converges at the order of k+2, whenever k?2. Numerical experiments are provided to compare the performance of the HDG method with that of the continuous Galerkin (CG) method for problems with smooth solutions, and to assess its performance in situations where the CG method is not adequate, that is, when the material is nearly incompressible and when there is a crack. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The traction boundary contour method for linear elasticity

This paper presents a further development of the boundary contour method. The boundary contour method is extended to cover the traction boundary integral equation. A traction boundary contour method is proposed for linear elastostatics. The formulation of traction boundary contour method is regular for points except the ends of the boundary element and corners. The present approach only requires line integrals for three‐dimensional problems and function evaluations at the ends of boundary elements for two‐dimensional cases. The implementation of the traction boundary contour method with quadratic boundary elements is presented for two‐dimensional problems. Numerical results are given for some two‐dimensional examples, and these are compared with analytical solutions. This method is shown to give excellent results for illustrative examples. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.