Mixed finite element formulation for frictionless contact problems

Simple mixed finite element models and a computational procedure are presented for the solution of frictionless contact problems. The analytical formulation is based on a form of Reissner's large-rotation theory with the effects of transverse shear deformation included. The contact conditions are incorporated into the formulation by using a perturbed Lagrangian approach with the fundamental unknowns consisting of the internal forces (stress-resultants), the generalized displacements, and the Lagrange multipliers associated with the contact conditions. The elemental arrays are obtained by using a modified form of the two-field, Hellinger-Reissner mixed variational principle. The internal forces and the Lagrange multipliers are allowed to be discontinuous at interelement boundaries. The Newton-Raphson iterative scheme is used for the solution of the nonlinear algebraic equations, and for the determination of the contact region and the contact pressures.

Two numerical examples, axisymmetric deformations of a hemispherical shell and planar deformations of a circular ring, are presented. Both structures are pressed against a rigid plate. Detailed information about the response of both structures is presented. These examples demonstrate the high accuracy of the mixed models and the effectiveness of the computational procedure developed.     

Modelling and control of a shell structure based on a finite dimensional variational formulation

A mathematical model of a controlled shell structure based on Hamilton’s principle and the generalized Ritz–Galerkin method is proposed in this paper. The problem of minimizing the stress energy is solved explicitly for a static version of this model. For the dynamical system under consideration, a procedure for estimating external disturbances and the state vector is derived. We also propose an observer design scheme and solve the stabilization problem for an arbitrary dimension of the linearized model. This approach allows us to perform control design for double-curved shells of complex geometry by combining analytical computation of the controller parameters with numerical data that represent the reference configuration and modal displacements of the shell. As an example, the parameters of our model are validated by results of a finite element analysis for the Stuttgart SmartShell structure.     

A DAE formulation for geared rotor dynamics including frictional contact between the teeth

A DAE approach is presented for geared rotor dynamics simulations with rigid helical evolvent gears. It includes the normal contact force between the teeth as well as tangential components. Given the evolvent tooth flank geometry of gear 1 and gear 2 [1], the contact line and the velocity difference in the contact are found. The requirement of no penetration of the teeth yields a non-holonomic constraint and the contact normal force. The friction caused force and moment are obtained by applying Coulomb's friction model. This approach is used to investigate the dynamics of two ideal rotors with translational DoFs, which are connected by gears to one another. The driving rotor has a given angular speed, while the driven rotates unrestrainedly and is connected to a rotational damper. Because of the periodic friction terms, the solution is periodic. A direct time integration or a harmonic approach can be used for the numerical computation. (© 2015 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Analysis of a history-dependent frictional contact problem

We consider a mathematical model which describes the quasistatic contact between a viscoelastic body and a foundation. The material’s behaviour is modelled with a constitutive law with long memory. The contact is frictional and is modelled with normal compliance and memory term, associated to the Coulomb’s law of dry friction. We present the classical formulation of the problem, list the assumptions on the data and derive a variational formulation of the model. Then we prove the unique weak solvability of the problem. The proof is based on arguments of history-dependent variational inequalities. We also study the dependence of the weak solution with respect to the data and prove a convergence result.     

High-order time-integration applied to p-version finite elements within finite strain thermo-viscoelasticity

In this essay a fully coupled, monolithic thermo-mechanical coupled simulation using high-order finite elements based on hierarchical shape-functions in combination with a high-order time-integration scheme using diagonally-implicit Runge-Kutta schemes is presented. The constitutive model is based on a finite strain thermo-viscoelasticity relation of overstress-type. (© 2013 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Applications of the three dimensional finite element alternating method

This paper describes some recent applications of the three dimensional finite element alternating method (FEAM). The problems solved involve surface flaws in various types of structure. They illustrate how the FEAM can be used to analyze problems involving mechanical and thermal loads, residual stresses, bonded to composite patch repairs, and fatigue.     

Nonsmooth dynamic frictional contact of a thermoviscoelastic body

Abstract

This paper studies a system of two hemivariational inequalities modeling a dynamic thermoviscoelastic contact problem with general nonmonotone and multivalued subdifferential boundary conditions. Thermal effects are included in the Kelvin–Voigt thermoviscoelastic constitutive law and in the boundary conditions, and so in frictional heat generation, which takes place on the boundary and enters the condition for the temperature. The existence of a weak solution to the problem is established using a recent surjectivity result for differential inclusions associated with pseudomonotone operators.     

Generalized Ricci curvature bounds for three dimensional contact subriemannian manifolds

Measure contraction property is one of the possible generalizations of Ricci curvature bound to more general metric measure spaces. In this paper, we discover necessary and sufficient conditions for a three dimensional contact subriemannian manifold to satisfy this property.     

Multilevel methods for mixed finite elements in three dimensions

In this paper we consider second order scalar elliptic boundary value problems posed over three–dimensional domains and their discretization by means of mixed Raviart–Thomas finite elements [18]. This leads to saddle point problems featuring a discrete flux vector field as additional unknown. Following Ewing and Wang [26], the proposed solution procedure is based on splitting the flux into divergence free components and a remainder. It leads to a variational problem involving solenoidal Raviart–Thomas vector fields. A fast iterative solution method for this problem is presented. It exploits the representation of divergence free vector fields as s of the –conforming finite element functions introduced by Nédélec [43]. We show that a nodal multilevel splitting of these finite element spaces gives rise to an optimal preconditioner for the solenoidal variational problem: Duality techniques in quotient spaces and modern algebraic multigrid theory [50, 10, 31] are the main tools for the proof. Received November 4, 1996 / Revised version received February 2, 1998     

Analysis of a finite element PML approximation for the three dimensional time-harmonic Maxwell problem

In our paper [Math. Comp. 76, 2007, 597-614] we considered the acoustic and electromagnetic scattering problems in three spatial dimensions. In particular, we studied a perfectly matched layer (PML) approximation to an electromagnetic scattering problem. We demonstrated both the solvability of the continuous PML approximations and the exponential convergence of the resulting solution to the solution of the original acoustic or electromagnetic problem as the layer increased.

In this paper, we consider finite element approximation of the truncated PML electromagnetic scattering problem. Specifically, we consider approximations which result from the use of Nédélec (edge) finite elements. We show that the resulting finite element problem is stable and gives rise to quasi-optimal convergence when the mesh size is sufficiently small.

     

Homogenization of a viscoelastic matrix in linear frictional contact

The paper is devoted to study of acoustic wave propagation in a partially consolidated composite material containing loose particles. Friction of particles against the consolidated part of the material causes mechanical energy dissipation. This situation is modelled by assuming that the medium has a periodic microstructure changing rapidly on the small scale ε. Each of the periodic microscopic cells is composed of a viscoelastic matrix containing a rigid particle in frictional contact with the matrix. We use the methods of two‐scale convergence to obtain effective acoustic equations for the homogenized material. The effective equations are history‐dependent and contain the body force term, reminiscent of the well‐known Stokes drag force. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mixed FEM of higher-order for a frictional contact problem

This paper presents mixed finite element methods of higher-order for an idealized frictional contact problem in linear elasticity. The approach relies on a saddle point formulation where the frictional contact condition is captured by a Lagrange multiplier. The convergence of the mixed scheme is proven and some a priori estimates for the h- and p-method are derived. Furthermore, a posteriori error estimates are presented which rely on the estimation of the discretization error of an auxiliary problem and some further terms capturing the error in the friction and complementary conditions. Numerical results confirm the applicability of the a posteriori error estimates within h- and hp-adaptive schemes. (© 2011 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

A stabilized mixed formulation for finite strain deformation for low-order tetrahedral solid elements

A stabilized mixed finite element formulation for four-noded tetrahedral elements is introduced for robustly solving small and large deformation problems. The uniqueness of the formulation lies within the fact that it is general in that it can be applied to any type of material model without requiring specialized geometric or material parameters. To overcome the problem of volumetric locking, a mixed element formulation that utilizes linear displacement and pressure fields was implemented. The stabilization is provided by enhancing the rate of deformation tensor with a term derived using a bubble function approach. The element was implemented through a user-programmable element of the commercial finite element software ANSYS. Using the ANSYS platform, the performance of the element was evaluated by comparing the predicted results with those obtained using mixed quadratic tetrahedral elements and hexahedral elements with a B-bar formulation. Based on the quality of the results, the new element formulation shows significant potential for use in simulating complex engineering processes.     

Analysis and numerical solution of a piezoelectric frictional contact problem

We consider a mathematical model which describes the frictional contact between an electro-elastic–visco-plastic body and a conductive foundation. The contact is modelled with normal compliance and a version of Coulomb’s law of dry friction, in which the stiffness and the friction coefficients depend on the electric potential. We derive a variational formulation of the problem and we prove an existence and uniqueness result. The proof is based on a recent existence and uniqueness result on history-dependent quasivariational inequalities obtained in [15]. Then we introduce a fully discrete scheme for solving the problem and, under certain solution regularity assumptions, we derive an optimal order error estimate. Finally, we present some numerical results in the study of a two-dimensional test problem which describes the process of contact in a microelectromechanical switch.     

Superconvergence of three dimensional Morley elements on cuboid meshes for biharmonic equations

In the present paper, superconvergence of second order, after an appropriate postprocessing, is achieved for three dimensional first order cuboid Morley elements of biharmonic equations. The analysis is dependent on superconvergence of second order for the consistency error and a corrected canonical interpolation operator, which help to establish supercloseness of second order for the corrected canonical interpolation. Then the final superconvergence is derived by a standard postprocessing. For first order nonconforming finite element methods of three dimensional fourth order elliptic problems, it is the first time that full superconvergence of second order is obtained without an extra boundary condition imposed on exact solutions. It is also the first time that superconvergence is established for nonconforming finite element methods of three dimensional fourth order elliptic problems. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the validity of the theoretical results.     

Mixed finite elements for second order elliptic problems in three variables

Summary Two families of mixed finite elements, one based on simplices and the other on cubes, are introduced as alternatives to the usual Raviart-Thomas-Nedelec spaces. These spaces are analogues of those introduced by Brezzi, Douglas, and Marini in two space variables. Error estimates inL ² andH ^–s are derived.