Creeping flow of a power law fluid past a fluid sphere

The stress variational principle is employed to obtain the lower bound for the drag offered by the creeping flow of a power law fluid past a Newtonian fluid sphere. In spite of the unprescribed interfacial velocity, a bound-on-bound approach yields bounds that are close to the upper bound obtained by Mohan (1974). Furthermore, for very viscous drops (solid behavior) the theory gives lower bounds that differ considerably from those of Wasserman & Slattery (1964) and show good agreement with the results of Yoshioka & Adachi (1973). The approach presented in this work provides an insight into the method of analyzing multiphase flow situations involving non-Newtonian fluids.     

An upper bound to the free energy of n-variant polycrystalline shape memory alloys

In the last two decades, the problem of computing the elastic energy of phase transforming materials has been studied by a variety of research groups. Due to the non-quasiconvexity of the underlying multi-well landscape, different relaxation methods have been used in order to estimate the quasiconvex envelope of the energy density, for which no explicit expression is known at present.This paper combines a recently developed lamination bound for monocrystalline shape memory alloys which relies on martensitic twinned microstructures with the work of Smyshlyaev and Willis [1998a. A ‘non-local’ variational approach to the elastic energy minimization of martensitic polycrystals. Proc. R. Soc. London A 454, 1573–1613]. As a result, a lamination upper bound for n-variant polycrystalline martensitic materials is obtained.The lamination bound is then compared with Reuß- and Taylor-type estimates. While, for given volume fractions, good agreement of lamination upper and convexification lower bounds is obtained, a comparison using energy-minimizing volume fractions computed from the various bounds yields larger differences. Finally, we also investigate the influence of the polycrystal's texture. For a strong ellipsoidal texture, we observe even better agreement of upper and lower bounds than for the case of isotropic statistics.     

Improved bounds on the energy-minimizing strains in martensitic polycrystals

This paper is concerned with the theoretical prediction of the energy-minimizing (or recoverable) strains in martensitic polycrystals, considering a nonlinear elasticity model of phase transformation at finite strains. The main results are some rigorous upper bounds on the set of energy-minimizing strains. Those bounds depend on the polycrystalline texture through the volume fractions of the different orientations. The simplest form of the bounds presented is obtained by combining recent results for single crystals with a homogenization approach proposed previously for martensitic polycrystals. However, the polycrystalline bound delivered by that procedure may fail to recover the monocrystalline bound in the homogeneous limit, as is demonstrated in this paper by considering an example related to tetragonal martensite. This motivates the development of a more detailed analysis, leading to improved polycrystalline bounds that are notably consistent with results for single crystals in the homogeneous limit. A two-orientation polycrystal of tetragonal martensite is studied as an illustration. In that case, analytical expressions of the upper bounds are derived and the results are compared with lower bounds obtained by considering laminate textures.     

A note on the determination of critical loads for flexible noncircular cylindrical shells with clamped edges

An approach is proposed to determine the upper and lower bounds of the critical load for flexible noncircular long cylindrical shells with clamped longitudinal edges under nonuniform loading. An exact analytical solution is designed. Its critical points are analyzed __________ Translated from Prikladnaya Mekhanika, Vol. 41, No. 11, pp. 78–87, November 2005.     

Macroscopic strain potentials in nonlinear porous materials

By taking a hollow sphere as a representative volume element (RVE), the macroscopic strain potentials of porous materials with power-law incompressible matrix are studied in this paper. According to the principles of the minimum potential energy in nonlinear elasticity and the variational procedure, static admissible stress fields and kinematic admissible displacement fields are constructed, and hence the upper and the lower bounds of the macroscopic strain potential are obtained. The bounds given in the present paper differ so slightly that they both provide perfect approximations of the exact strain potential of the studied porous materials. It is also found that the upper bound proposed by previous authors is much higher than the present one, and the lower bounds given by Cocks is much lower. Moreover, the present calculation is also compared with the variational lower bound of Ponte Castañeda for statistically isotropic porous materials. Finally, the validity of the hollow spherical RVE for the studied nonlinear porous material is discussed by the difference between the present numerical results and the Cocks bound.     

About lamination upper and convexification lower bounds on the free energy of monoclinic shape memory alloys in the context of <Emphasis Type="Italic">T</Emphasis><Subscript>3</Subscript>-configurations and R-phase formation

This work is concerned with different estimates of the quasiconvexification of multi-well energy landscapes of NiTi shape memory alloys, which models the overall behavior of the material. Within the setting of the geometrically linear theory of elasticity, we consider a formula of the quasiconvexification which involves the so-called energy of mixing.We are interested in lower and upper bounds on the energy of mixing in order to get a better understanding of the quasiconvexification. The lower bound on the energy of mixing is obtained by convexification; it is also called Sachs or Reuß lower bound. The upper bound on the energy of mixing is based on second-order lamination. In particular, we are interested in the difference between the lower and upper bounds. Our numerical simulations show that the difference is in fact of the order of 1% and less in martensitic NiTi, even though both bounds on the energy of mixing were rather expected to differ more significantly. Hence, in various circumstances it may be justified to simply work with the convexification of the multi-well energy, which is relatively easy to deal with, or with the lamination upper bound, which always corresponds to a physically realistic microstructure, as an estimate of the quasiconvexification. In order to obtain a potentially large difference between upper and lower bound, we consider the bounds along paths in strain space which involve incompatible strains. In monoclinic shape memory alloys, three-tuples of pairwise incompatible strains play a special role since they form so-called T ₃-configurations, originally discussed in a stress-free setting. In this work, we therefore consider in particular numerical simulations along paths in strain space which are related to these T ₃-configurations. Interestingly, we observe that the second-order lamination upper bound along such paths is related to the geometry of the T ₃-configurations. In addition to the purely martensitic regime, we also consider the influence of adding R-phase variants to the microstructure. Adding single variants of R-phase is shown to be energetically favorable in a compatible martensitic setting. However, the combination of several R-phase variants with compatible or incompatible martensite yields significant differences between the bounds considered.     

Bounds on the overall properties of composites with ellipsoidal inclusions

A new model is put forward to bound the effective elastic moduli of composites with ellipsoidal inclusions. In the present paper, transition layer for each ellipsoidal inclusion is introduced to make the trial displacement field for the upper bound and the trial stress field for the lower bound satisfy the continuous interface conditions which are absolutely necessary for the application of variational principles. According to the principles of minimum potential energy and minimum complementary energy, the upper and lower bounds on the effective elastic moduli of composites with ellipsoidal inclusions are rigorously derived. The effects of the distribution and geometric parameters of ellipsoidal inclusions on the bounds of the effective elastic moduli are analyzed in details. The present upper and lower bounds are still finite when the bulk and shear moduli of ellipsoidal inclusions tend to infinity and zero, respectively. It should be mentioned that the present method is simple and needs not calculate the complex integrals of multi-point correlation functions. Meanwhile, the present paper provides an entirely different way to bound the effective elastic moduli of composites with ellipsoidal inclusions, which can be developed to obtain a series of bounds by taking different trial displacement and stress fields.     

Optimal anisotropic three-phase conducting composites: Plane problem

The paper establishes tight lower bound for effective conductivity tensor K₁ of two-dimensional three-phase conducting anisotropic composites and defines optimal microstructures. It is assumed that three materials are mixed with fixed volume fractions and that the conductivity of one of the materials is infinite. The bound expands the Hashin–Shtrikman and translation bounds to multiphase structures, it is derived using a combination of translation method and additional inequalities on the fields in the materials; similar technique was used by Nesi, 1995, Cherkaev, 2009 for isotropic multiphase composites. This paper expands the bounds to the anisotropic composites with effective conductivity tensor K₁. The lower bound of conductivity (G-closure) is a piece-wise analytic function of eigenvalues of K₁, that depends only on conductivities of components and their volume fractions. Also, we find optimal microstructures that realize the bounds, developing the technique suggested earlier by Albin et al., 2007a, Cherkaev, 2009. The optimal microstructures are laminates of some rank for all regions. The found structures match the bounds in all but one region of parameters; we discuss the reason for the gap and numerically estimate it.     

On the plastic wave speeds in rate-independent elastic–plastic materials with anisotropic elasticity

This paper presents a theoretical study of the speeds of plastic waves in rate-independent elastic–plastic materials with anisotropic elasticity. It is shown that for a given propagation direction the plastic wave speeds are equal to or lower than the corresponding elastic speeds, and a simple expression is provided for the bound on the difference between the elastic and the plastic wave speeds. The bound is given as a function of the plastic modulus and the magnitude of a vector defined by the current stress state and the propagation direction. For elastic–plastic materials with cubic symmetry and with tetragonal symmetry, the upper and lower bounds on the plastic wave speeds are obtained without numerically solving an eigenvalue problem. Numerical examples of materials with cubic symmetry (copper) and with tetragonal symmetry (tin) are presented as a validation of the proposed bounds. The lower bound proposed here on the minimum plastic wave speed may also be used as an efficient alternative to the bifurcation analysis at early stages of plastic deformation for the determination of the loss of ellipticity.     

Spinning rods, elliptical disks and solid ellipsoidal bodies: Elastic and plastic stresses and limit spins

The analysis of the stresses in one-, two- and three-dimensional spinning bodies is discussed in a systematic and comprehensive way. First elastic solutions are derived for rods, for elliptical-shaped flat disks and for ellipsoidal solid bodies spinning about their sideways axes. Then the spins for first plastic yield are found in each case using each of the Tresca and the von Mises yield conditions. Then upper and lower bounds on the maximum allowable limit spins where the body would globally fail assuming perfectly plastic behavior are derived. The elastic solutions at first yield always give a lower bound to that limit spin, but global failure generally does not occur until the spin is increased. A way to calculate an improved lower bound is illustrated. Upper bounds are found in a simple and new way. The method uses the fact that the volume-averaged stresses can be calculated directly from the loadings without the need for any actual stress solutions, and then it is proved that the use of those average stresses in the yield functions always gives an upper bound to the limit loads. That use of the statically determinate average stresses to obtain meaningful plastic upper bounds to limit loads is though to be a new method, and can be applied to any shape. Finally, several finite element calculations are used to determine the quantitative relations between the lower and upper bounds and the actual limit spins for ellipsoidal bodies.The results are of interest in the spin of planetary bodies, where they explain the nature of an average-stress approximate method, and in the analysis of spinning bodies in general. In addition, the approach gives a very interesting example of the utility of the limit analysis approaches of plasticity theories.     

Influence of axisymmetric dents in ribbed shells on minimum critical loads

The effect of axisymmetric dents in ribbed shells on the minimum critical loads is studied analytically. The upper and lower bounds for the critical stresses in imperfect cylindrical shells reinforced with stringers, rings, and both are estimated. The upper bounds are compared with those obtained from the known solutions for perfect ribbed momentless shells and with experimental data. The effect of the amplitude of initial dents and their number on the upper and lower bounds of critical stresses is examined. The procedure used is the most efficient to determine the load-bearing capacity of ring-reinforced and ribbed shells __________ Translated from Prikladnaya Mekhanika, Vol. 43, No. 5, pp. 73–79, May 2007.     

2-D Normal compliances for elastic and visco-elastic binder contact with finite particle size effect

The close-form 2-D normal force–displacement compliance relation (binder contact law) is derived for a system of two elastic cylindrical particles bound by an elastic or visco-elastic binder based on the approach developed by Zhu; Zhu and Zhu. A new result of finite particle size effect on the compliance is also obtained. One important application of this binder compliance is in the area of the homogenization analysis of fibrous composites, and computation of the binder compliance based effective transverse bulk modulus is conducted in this article with its comparison to the corresponding upper and lower bounds.     

有界参数结构特征值的上下界定理

与方法近似性的结构特征值包含定理不同,给出参数近似性的结构的特征值上下界定理．在结构刚度矩阵和质量矩阵可以利用结构参数进行非员分解的条件下,通过区间分析,将特征值的上下界分解成两个广义特征值问题进行求解．结果可以看成是胡海昌教授的特征值质量包含定理和刚度包含定理在结构参数近似性特征值问题中的一种推广和应用．     

Vortex Rings in Fast Rotating Bose–Einstein Condensates

When Bose–Einstein condensates are rotated sufficiently fast, a giant vortex phase appears, that is, the condensate becomes annular with no vortices in the bulk but a macroscopic phase circulation around the central hole. In a former paper (Correggi et al. in Commun Math Phys 303:451–308, 2011) we have studied this phenomenon by minimizing the two-dimensional Gross–Pitaevskii (GP) energy on the unit disc. In particular, we computed an upper bound to the critical speed for the transition to the giant vortex phase. In this paper we confirm that this upper bound is optimal by proving that if the rotation speed is taken slightly below the threshold, there are vortices in the condensate. We prove that they gather along a particular circle on which they are uniformly distributed. This is done by providing new upper and lower bounds to the GP energy.     

Creep life predictions for structures subject to variable loading

Previous work which established upper and lower bounds on the creep life of steadily loaded structures is extended to cater for load and temperature variations in non-homogeneous structures. The investigation is limited to the range where short term plasticity and fatigue damage can be ignored. For proportional loading, the upper bound which is based on limit analysis, is similar in form to that for constant loading. In the more general case, the upper bound is less stringent and is based on the mean load and temperature distribution over the lifetime. A lower bound on life is taken as the time for the first part of the structure to fail.The bounds are applied to three simple structures. For proportional loading the upper bound predicts the lifetime with the same accuracy as for constant loading except for extreme load variations. The presence of a temperature distribution alters the accuracy of the upper bound prediction but in most cases the change is small. In contrast, the lower bound is very sensitive to the temperature gradient.The authors use these results to develop approximate techniques for estimating the creep life of components subjected to variable loads and temperature distributions. Simplified design procedures based on the upper bound are examined and suitable amendments are proposed.     

A non-convex lower bound on the effective energy of polycrystalline shape memory alloys

This paper addresses the estimation of the effective free energy of polycrystalline shape memory alloys, in the framework of nonlinear elasticity and infinitesimal strains. The translation method is combined with a Hashin-Shtrikman type variational formulation to provide rigorous lower bounds on the effective free energy. Those bounds incorporate both intra-grain compatibility conditions (resulting in a non-convex bound) and inter-grain constraints (by taking one- and two-point statistics into account). Some examples are given to compare the results obtained with other bounds from the literature.     

Estimate of the pressure distribution for the nonlinear verigin problem in the two-dimensional radial case

A study is made of the problem of two-dimensional radial displacement by gas of liquid from an unbounded uniform stratum. A comparison theorem is used to obtain lower and upper bounds for the pressure distribution. Calculations made using the obtained expressions showed that the difference between the upper and lower bounds is a fraction of a percent. Thus, in a calculation of the pressure a high degree of accuracy is achieved by using the lower bound for it.Translated from Izvestiya Akademii Nauk SSSR, Mekhanika Zhidkosti i Gaza, No. 3, pp. 153–155, May–June, 1983.     

An upper bound to the free energy of mixing by twin-compatible lamination for n-variant martensitic phase transformations

Modeling the energetic behavior of martensitic (phase transforming) materials usually leads to non quasiconvex energy formulations. For this reason, researchers often employ quasiconvex relaxation methods to improve the character of the formulation. Unfortunately, explicit expressions for the relaxed free energy density for multi-variant martensitic materials are typically not available. Thus, some researchers have employed a Reuβ-like convex lower bound, which neglects compatibility constraints, as an estimate on the free energy of mixing. To be confident with such a technique, one needs a measure of the quality of the lower bound. In this paper, we seek such a measure by comparing the Reuβ-like lower bound to an upper bound. The upper bound is constructed upon assumptions on the type of microstructures that form in such alloys. In particular, we consider lamination type microstructures which form by temperature- or stress-induced transformation in monoclinic and orthorhombic Copper-based alloys with cubic austenitic symmetry. Our results display a striking congruence of upper and lower bounds in the most relevant cases.     

Interval analysis of nonlinear frames with uncertain connection properties

Semi-rigid connections can often be a more economical solution for a framing system than one with either fully fixed connections or fully pinned ones. In view of the fact that the properties of such ductile and partial-strength connections are not known accurately, this paper presents a method for the obtention of both upper and lower bound responses of semi-rigid frames for possible variations in their moment-rotation properties. The latter are thus assumed to be known within some key upper and lower bound values, namely a constitutive law that is still deterministic but is described in terms of a so-called “interval” model. A mathematical programming approach is used to formulate and solve the problem. In particular, for each load level, a pair of nonstandard optimization problems known as interval mathematical programs with equilibrium constraints (or interval MPECs) are solved to provide the required bounds. A number of examples are provided to highlight the important effects of considering uncertainties in semi-rigid connection properties.     

Optimal lower bounds on the hydrostatic stress amplification inside random two-phase elastic composites

Composites made from two linear isotropic elastic materials are subjected to a uniform hydrostatic stress. It is assumed that only the volume fraction of each elastic material is known. Lower bounds on all rth moments of the hydrostatic stress field inside each phase are obtained for r?2. A lower bound on the maximum value of the hydrostatic stress field is also obtained. These bounds are given by explicit formulas depending on the volume fractions of the constituent materials and their elastic moduli. All of these bounds are shown to be the best possible as they are attained by the hydrostatic stress field inside the Hashin-Shtrikman coated sphere assemblage. The bounds provide a new opportunity for the assessment of load transfer between macroscopic and microscopic scales for statistically defined microstructures.