扩展有限元法(XFEM)及其应用

扩展有限元法(extended finite element method,XFEM)是1999年提出的一种求解不连续力学问题的数值方法, 它继承了常规有限元法(CFEM)的所有优点, 在模拟界面、裂纹生长、复杂流体等不连续问题时特别有效, 短短几年间得到了快速发展与应用. XFEM与CFEM的最根本区别在于, 它所使用的网格与结构内部的几何或物理界面无关, 从而克服了在诸如裂纹尖端等高应力和变形集中区进行高密度网格剖分所带来的困难, 模拟裂纹生长时也无需对网格进行重新剖分.重点介绍XFEM的基本原理、实施步骤及应用实例等, 并进行必要的评述. 单位分解概念保证了XFEM的收敛, 基于此, XFEM通过改进单元的形状函数使之包含问题不连续性的基本成分, 从而放松对网格密度的过分要求. 水平集法是XFEM中常用的确定内部界面位置和跟踪其生长的数值技术, 任何内部界面可用它的零水平集函数表示. 第2和第3节分别简要介绍单位分解法和水平集法;第4节和第5节介绍XFEM的基本思想、详细实施步骤和若干应用实例, 同时修正了以往文献中的一些不妥之处; 最后, 初步展望了该领域尚需进一步研究的课题.      

非均质材料热传导问题的扩展有限元法

针对非均质材料,提出了以导热系数为基本参数的热传导扩展有限元法。划分网格时不需要考虑材料界面的存在,因此网格的形成可以大大地简化,且可以获得高质量的网格。不含材料界面的单元,其温度场函数将退化为常规有限元的函数。含材料界面的单元,采用基于水平集的加强函数加强常规温度的近似,加强函数用于模拟界面。数值算例结果体现了该方法...     

An extended finite element method for modeling near-interfacial crack propagation in a layered structure

The extended finite element method (XFEM) is applied for the simulation of near-interfacial crack propagation in a metal–ceramic layered structure. An experimental evidence indicates that, in a ceramic–metal–ceramic sandwich structure, a near-interfacial crack in the ceramic layer can be drawn to or deflect away from the metal layer depending on the difference in elastic properties across the interface. To model near-interfacial fracture, only the Heaviside functions are used for the XFEM, and the vector level set method is employed for efficient evaluation of the enrichment functions. The crack propagation paths predicted by the XFEM simulation are found to be consistent with the experimental observation.     

Adaptive non‐conformal mesh refinement and extended finite element method for viscous flow inside complex moving geometries

Two different techniques to analyze non‐Newtonian viscous flow in complex geometries with internal moving parts and narrow gaps are compared. The first technique is a non‐conforming mesh refinement approach based on the fictitious domain method (FDM), and the second one is the extended finite element method (XFEM). The refinement technique uses one fixed reference mesh, and to impose continuity across non‐conforming regions, constraints using Lagrangian multipliers are used. The size of elements locally in the high shear rate regions is reduced to increase accuracy. FDM is shown to have limitations; therefore, XFEM is applied to decouple the fluid from the internal moving rigid bodies. In XFEM, the discontinuous field variables are captured by using virtual degrees of freedom that serve as enrichment and by applying special integration over the intersected elements. The accuracy of the two methods is demonstrated by direct comparison with results of a boundary‐fitted mesh applied to a two‐dimensional cross section of a twin‐screw extruder. Compared with non‐conforming FDM, XFEM shows a considerable improvement in accuracy around the rigid body, especially in the narrow gap regions. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cahn–Hilliard modeling of particles suspended in two‐phase flows

In this paper, we present a model for the dynamics of particles suspended in two‐phase flows by coupling the Cahn–Hilliard theory with the extended finite element method (XFEM). In the Cahn–Hilliard model the interface is considered to have a small but finite thickness, which circumvents explicit tracking of the interface. For the direct numerical simulation of particle‐suspended flows, we incorporate an XFEM, in which the particle domain is decoupled from the fluid domain. To cope with the movement of the particles, a temporary ALE scheme is used for the mapping of field variables at the previous time levels onto the computational mesh at the current time level. By combining the Cahn–Hilliard model with the XFEM, the particle motion at an interface can be simulated on a fixed Eulerian mesh without any need of re‐meshing. The model is general, but to demonstrate and validate the technique, here the dynamics of a single particle at a fluid–fluid interface is studied. First, we apply a small disturbance on a particle resting at an interface between two fluids, and investigate the particle movement towards its equilibrium position. In particular, we are interested in the effect of interfacial thickness, surface tension, particle size and viscosity ratio of two fluids on the particle movement towards its equilibrium position. Finally, we show the movement of a particle passing through multiple layers of fluids. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An extended finite element method for the simulation of particulate viscoelastic flows

We present an extended finite element method (XFEM) for the direct numerical simulation of the flow of viscoelastic fluids with suspended particles. For moving particle problems, we devise a temporary arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian (ALE) scheme which defines the mapping of field variables at previous time levels onto the computational mesh at the current time level. In this method, a regular mesh is used for the whole computational domain including both fluid and particles. A temporary ALE mesh is constructed separately and the computational mesh is kept unchanged throughout the whole computations. Particles are moving on a fixed Eulerian mesh without any need of re-meshing. For mesh refinements around the interface, we combine XFEM with the grid deformation method, in which nodal points are redistributed close to the interface while preserving the mesh topology. Our method is verified by comparing with the results of boundary fitted mesh problems combined with the conventional ALE scheme. The proposed method shows similar accuracy compared with boundary fitted mesh problems and superior accuracy compared with the fictitious domain method. If the grid deformation method is combined with XFEM, the required computational time is reduced significantly compared to uniform mesh refinements, while providing mesh convergent solutions. We apply the proposed method to the particle migration in rotating Couette flow of a Giesekus fluid. We investigate the effect of initial particle positions, the Weissenberg number, the mobility parameter of the Giesekus model and the particle size on the particle migration. We also show two-particle interactions in confined shear flow of a viscoelastic fluid. We find three different regimes of particle motions according to initial separations of particles.     

The intrinsic XFEM for two‐fluid flows

In two‐fluid flows, jumps and/or kinks along the interfaces are present in the resulting velocity and pressure fields. Standard methods require mesh manipulations with the aim that either element edges align with the interfaces or that the mesh is sufficiently refined near the interfaces. In contrast, enriched methods, such as the extended finite element method (XFEM), enable the representation of arbitrary jumps and kinks inside elements. Thereby, optimal convergence can be achieved for two‐fluid flows with meshes that remain fixed throughout the simulation. In the intrinsic XFEM, in contrast to other enriched methods, no more unknowns are present in the approximation than in a standard finite element approximation. In this work, the intrinsic XFEM is employed for the simulation of incompressible two‐fluid flows. Numerical results are shown for a number of test cases and prove the success of the method. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On a new extended finite element method for dislocations: Core enrichment and nonlinear formulation

A recently developed finite element method for the modeling of dislocations is improved by adding enrichments in the neighborhood of the dislocation core. In this method, the dislocation is modeled by a line or surface of discontinuity in two or three dimensions. The method is applicable to nonlinear and anisotropic materials, large deformations, and complicated geometries. Two separate enrichments are considered: a discontinuous jump enrichment and a singular enrichment based on the closed-form, infinite-domain solutions for the dislocation core. Several examples are presented for dislocations constrained in layered materials in 2D and 3D to illustrate the applicability of the method to interface problems.     

A conformal decomposition finite element method for modeling stationary fluid interface problems

A method is developed for modeling fluid transport in domains that do not conform to the finite element mesh. One or more level set functions are used to describe the fluid domain. A background, non‐conformal mesh is decomposed into elements that conform to the level set interfaces. Enrichment takes place by adding nodes that lie on the interfaces. Unlike other enriched finite element methods, the proposed technique requires no changes to the underlying element assembly, element interpolation, or element quadrature. The complexity is entirely contained within the element decomposition routines. It is argued that the accuracy of the method is no less than that for eXtended Finite Element Methods (XFEM) with Heaviside enrichment. The accuracy is demonstrated using multiple numerical tests. In all cases, optimal rates of convergence are obtained for both volume and surface quantities. Jacobi preconditioning is shown to remove the ill‐conditioning that may result from the nearly degenerate conformal elements. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A stabilized Nitsche‐type extended embedding mesh approach for 3D low‐ and high‐Reynolds‐number flows

This paper presents a stabilized extended finite element method (XFEM) based fluid formulation to embed arbitrary fluid patches into a fixed background fluid mesh. The new approach is highly beneficial when it comes to computational grid generation for complex domains, as it allows locally increased resolutions independent from size and structure of the background mesh. Motivating applications for such a domain decomposition technique are complex fluid‐structure interaction problems, where an additional boundary layer mesh is used to accurately capture the flow around the structure. The objective of this work is to provide an accurate and robust XFEM‐based coupling for low‐ as well as high‐Reynolds‐number flows. Our formulation is built from the following essential ingredients: Coupling conditions on the embedded interface are imposed weakly using Nitsche's method supported by extra terms to guarantee mass conservation and to control the convective mass transport across the interface for transient viscous‐dominated and convection‐dominated flows. Residual‐based fluid stabilizations in the interior of the fluid subdomains and accompanying face‐oriented fluid and ghost‐penalty stabilizations in the interface zone stabilize the formulation in the entire fluid domain. A detailed numerical study of our stabilized embedded fluid formulation, including an investigation of variants of Nitsche's method for viscous flows, shows optimal error convergence for viscous‐dominated and convection‐dominated flow problems independent of the interface position. Challenging two‐dimensional and three‐dimensional numerical examples highlight the robustness of our approach in all flow regimes: benchmark computations for laminar flow around a cylinder, a turbulent driven cavity flow at Re = 10000 and the flow interacting with a three‐dimensional flexible wall. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Local mesh adaptation technique for front tracking problems

A numerical model is developed for the simulation of moving interfaces in viscous incompressible flows. The model is based on the finite element method with a pseudo-concentration technique to track the front. Since a Eulerian approach is chosen, the interface is advected by the flow through a fixed mesh. Therefore, material discontinuity across the interface cannot be described accurately. To remedy this problem, the model has been supplemented with a local mesh adaptation technique. This latter consists in updating the mesh at each time step to the interface position, such that element boundaries lie along the front. It has been implemented for unstructured triangular finite element meshes. The outcome of this technique is that it allows an accurate treatment of material discontinuity across the interface and, if necessary, a modelling of interface phenomena such as surface tension by using specific boundary elements. For illustration, two examples are computed and presented in this paper: the broken dam problem and the Rayleigh–Taylor instability. Good agreement has been obtained in the comparison of the numerical results with theory or available experimental data. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Finite element analysis of interfacial stresses in FRP–RC hybrid beams

The interfacial stresses in fiber reinforced plastic (FRP)–reinforced concrete (RC) hybrid beams were studied by the finite element method. The mesh sensitivity test shows that the finite element results for interfacial stresses are not sensitive to the finite element mesh. The finite element analysis then is used to calculate the interfacial stress distribution and evaluate the effect of the structural parameters on the interfacial behavior. It is shown that both the normal and shear stresses at the interface are influenced by the material and geometry parameters of the composite beam. This research is helpful for the understanding on mechanical behavior of the interface and design of the FRP–RC hybrid structures.     

Thermoelastic analysis of multiple defects with the extended finite element method

In this paper, the extended finite element method (XFEM) is adopted to analyze the interaction between a sin-gle macroscopic inclusion and a single macroscopic crack as well as that between multiple macroscopic or micro-scopic defects under thermal/mechanical load. The effects of different shapes of multiple inclusions on the material thermomechanical response are investigated, and the level set method is coupled with XFEM to analyze the interaction of multiple defects. Further, the discretized extended finite element approximations in relation to thermoelastic prob-lems of multiple defects under displacement or temperature field are given. Also, the interfaces of cracks or materials are represented by level set functions, which allow the mesh assignment not to conform to crack or material interfaces. Moreover, stress intensity factors of cracks are obtained by the interaction integral method or the M-integral method, and the stress/strain/stiffness fields are simulated in the case of multiple cracks or multiple inclusions. Finally, some numer-ical examples are provided to demonstrate the accuracy of our proposed method.     

直接计算应力强度因子的扩展有限元法

系统地给出了直接计算应力强度因子的扩展有限元法。该方法以常规有限元法为基础,利用单位分解法思想,通过在近似位移表达式中增加能够反映裂纹面的不连续函数及反映裂尖局部特性的裂尖渐进位移场函数,间接体现裂纹面的存在,从而无需使裂纹面与有限元网格一致,无需在裂尖布置高密度网格,也不需要后处理就可以直接计算出应力强度因子,并且大大简化了前后处理工作。最后通过两个简单算例验证了该方法的精度,分析了影响计算结果的因素,并与采用J积分计算的应力强度因子作了对比,得出了两种方法计算精度相当的结论。     

ENRICHED GOAL-ORIENTED ERROR ESTIMATION APPLIED TO FRACTURE MECHANICS PROBLEMS SOLVED BY XFEM

Based on the concept of constitutive relation error along with the residual of both origin and dual problems, a goal-oriented error estimation method with extended degrees of freedom is developed in this paper. It leads to high quality local error bounds in the problem of fracture mechanics simulation with extended finite element method (XFEM), which involves enrichment to solve a stress singularity in the crack. Since goal-oriented error estimation with enriched degrees of freedom gives us a chance to evaluate the XFEM simulation, the stress intensity factor calculated by two kinds of XFEM programs developed by ourselves and by commercial code ABAQUS are compared in this work. By comparing the reliability of the stress intensity factor calculation, the accuracy of two programs in different cases is evaluated and the source of error is discussed. A 2-dimensional XFEM example is given to illustrate the computational procedure.     

扩展有限元裂尖场精度研究

论述了扩展有限元方法和基本原理,研究了单元类型(四边形单元和三角形单元、线性单元和二次单元)、网格密度、J积分区域半径等因素对裂尖局部应力场(应力强度因子)计算精度的影响。研究发现,上述因素对裂尖应力强度因子计算的收敛速度与稳定性影响不大,证实了XFEM可以用较少的节点获得较高的裂尖场精度,并提出了通过固定裂尖附加区半径可以进一步改善XFEM的收敛速度。     

An adaptive enrichment algorithm for advection‐dominated problems

We are interested in developing a numerical framework well suited for advection–diffusion problems when the advection part is dominant. In that case, given Dirichlet type boundary condition, it is well known that a boundary layer develops. To resolve correctly this layer, standard methods consist in increasing the mesh resolution and possibly increasing the formal accuracy of the numerical method. In this paper, we follow another path: we do not seek to increase the formal accuracy of the scheme but, by a careful choice of finite element, to lower the mesh resolution in the layer. Indeed the finite element representation we choose is locally the sum of a standard one plus an enrichment. This paper proposes such a method and with several numerical examples, we show the potential of this approach. In particular, we show that the method is not very sensitive to the choice of the enrichment and develop an adaptive algorithm to automatically choose the enrichment functions.Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Spurious currents in finite element based level set methods for two‐phase flow

A study of spurious currents in continuous finite element based simulations of the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations for two‐phase flows is presented on the basis of computations on a circular drop in equilibrium. The conservative and the standard level set methods are used. It is shown that a sharp surface tension force, expressed as a line integral along the interface, can give rise to large spurious currents and oscillations in the pressure that do not decrease with mesh refinement. If instead a regularized surface tension representation is used, exact force balance at the interface is possible, both for a fully coupled discretization approach and for a fractional step projection method. However, the numerical curvature calculation introduces errors that cause spurious currents. Different ways to extend the curvature from the interface to the whole domain are discussed and investigated. The impact of using different finite element spaces and stabilization methods is also considered. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于滑移界面耦合技术的旋转电机磁场仿真方法

提出了一种基于滑移界面耦合技术的旋转电机磁场仿真方法。首先,对旋转电机问题建立等效弱形式,用Lagrange乘子法施加Coulomb规范条件和滑移界面处的磁矢势连续性条件;然后,采用混合单元方法离散整个求解域中的未知量,采用棱边单元法离散滑移界面处的Lagrange矢量乘子,并采用多点约束法耦合滑移界面处的Lagrange标量乘子自由度,该方法无须在旋转电机模型的非匹配网格中构建生成树,即可自动保证磁矢势解的唯一性;最后,采用旋转线圈案例和简化的永磁同步电机案例验证了本文方法的有效性。     

混凝土断裂的连续-非连续方法

采用有限元形函数作为单位分解函数,位移间断用富集节点的附加自由度表示,建立了允许在单元内部位移非连续的局部富集公式以表征混凝土的开裂区域.富集基函数由节点形函数和节点形函数与间断函数的乘积的并集构成.非连续位移的扩展路径完全与网格结构无关.不同于以非协调应变为基础的嵌入非连续模型,对单元的类型没有限制而且间断位移可以贯穿单元边界.局部富集思想与扩展有限元类似,但富集点自由度保持节点位移的物理意义不变,使相邻单元无需进行富集运算.在变分公式中引入混凝土粘结本构定律,推导了考虑断裂过程区非线性影响的基本方程.对混凝土粘结裂纹扩展的数值模拟说明了该计算方法的有效性.