No Arabic abstract
We present a barrier method for treating frictional contact on interfaces embedded in finite elements. The barrier treatment has several attractive features, including: (i) it does not introduce any additional degrees of freedom or iterative steps, (ii) it is free of inter-penetration, (iii) it avoids an ill-conditioned matrix system, and (iv) it allows one to control the solution accuracy directly. We derive the contact pressure from a smooth barrier energy function that is designed to satisfy the non-penetration constraint. Likewise, we make use of a smoothed friction law in which the stick-slip transition is described by a continuous function of the slip displacement. We discretize the formulation using the extended finite element method to embed interfaces inside elements, and devise an averaged surface integration scheme that effectively provides stable solutions without traction oscillations. Subsequently, we develop a way to tailor the parameters of the barrier method to embedded interfaces, such that the method can be used without parameter tuning. We verify and investigate the proposed method through numerical examples with various levels of complexity. The numerical results demonstrate that the proposed method is remarkably robust for challenging frictional contact problems, while requiring low cost comparable to that of the penalty method.
We introduce a phase-field method for continuous modeling of cracks with frictional contacts. Compared with standard discrete methods for frictional contacts, the phase-field method has two attractive features: (1) it can represent arbitrary crack geometry without an explicit function or basis enrichment, and (2) it does not require an algorithm for imposing contact constraints. The first feature, which is common in phase-field models of fracture, is attained by regularizing a sharp interface geometry using a surface density functional. The second feature, which is a unique advantage for contact problems, is achieved by a new approach that calculates the stress tensor in the regularized interface region depending on the contact condition of the interface. Particularly, under a slip condition, this approach updates stress components in the slip direction using a standard contact constitutive law, while making other stress components compatible with stress in the bulk region to ensure non-penetrating deformation in other directions. We verify the proposed phase-field method using stationary interface problems simulated by discrete methods in the literature. Subsequently, by allowing the phase field to evolve according to brittle fracture theory, we demonstrate the proposed methods capability for modeling crack growth with frictional contact.
Simulation of contact mechanics in fractured media is of paramount important in the scope of computational mechanics. In this work, a preconditioned mixed-finite element scheme with Lagrange multipliers is proposed in the framework of constrained variational principle, which has the capability to handle frictional contact mechanics of the multi-crossing fractures. The slippage, opening and contact traction on fractures are calculated by the resulted saddle-point algebraic system. A novel treatment is devised to guarantee physical solutions at the intersected position of crossing fractures. A preconditioning technique is introduced to re-scale the resulting saddle-point algebraic system, to preserve the robustness of the system. An iteration strategy, namely monolithic-updated contact algorithm, is then designed to update the two primary unknowns (displacement and Lagrange multiplier) in one algebraic block. A series of numerical tests is conducted to study the contact mechanics of single- and multi-crossing fractures. Benchmark study is presented to verify the presented numerical method. Two tests with crossing fractures are studied, in which the slippage and opening can be calculated. The effects of crossing fractures on the deformation field can be observed in the calculated results, in which the variation of slippage/opening is analyzed by different loading conditions.
We develop a stable finite difference method for the elastic wave equations in bounded media, where the material properties can be discontinuous at curved interfaces. The governing equations are discretized in second order form by a fourth or sixth order accurate summation-by-parts operator. The mesh size is determined by the velocity structure of the material, resulting in nonconforming grid interfaces with hanging nodes. We use order-preserving interpolation and the ghost point technique to couple adjacent mesh blocks in an energy-conserving manner, which is supported by a fully discrete stability analysis. In numerical experiments, we demonstrate that the convergence rate is optimal, and is the same as when a globally uniform mesh is used in a single domain. In addition, with a predictor-corrector time integration method, we obtain time stepping stability with stepsize almost the same as given by the usual Courant Friedrichs Lewy condition.
We study the dynamics of a droplet moving on an inclined rough surface in the absence of inertial and viscous stress effects. In this case, the dynamics of the droplet is a purely geometric motion in terms of the wetting domain and the capillary surface. Using a single graph representation, we interpret this geometric motion as a gradient flow on a Hilbert manifold. We propose unconditionally stable first/second order numerical schemes to simulate this geometric motion of the droplet, which is described using motion by mean curvature coupled with moving contact lines. The schemes are based on (i) explicit moving boundaries, which decouple the dynamic updates of the contact lines and the capillary surface, (ii) a semi-Lagrangian method on moving grids and (iii) a predictor-corrector method with a nonlinear elliptic solver upto second order accuracy. For the case of quasi-static dynamics with continuous spatial variable in the numerical schemes, we prove the stability and convergence of the first/second order numerical schemes. To demonstrate the accuracy and long-time validation of the proposed schemes, several challenging computational examples - including breathing droplets, droplets on inhomogeneous rough surfaces and quasi-static Kelvin pendant droplets - are constructed and compared with exact solutions to quasi-static dynamics obtained by desingularized differential-algebraic system of equations (DAEs).
We develop a fourth order accurate finite difference method for the three dimensional elastic wave equation in isotropic media with the piecewise smooth material property. In our model, the material property can be discontinuous at curved interfaces. The governing equations are discretized in second order form on curvilinear meshes by using a fourth order finite difference operator satisfying a summation-by-parts property. The method is energy stable and high order accurate. The highlight is that mesh sizes can be chosen according to the velocity structure of the material so that computational efficiency is improved. At the mesh refinement interfaces with hanging nodes, physical interface conditions are imposed by using ghost points and interpolation. With a fourth order predictor-corrector time integrator, the fully discrete scheme is energy conserving. Numerical experiments are presented to verify the fourth order convergence rate and the energy conserving property.