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Adaptive modeling of damage growth using a coupled FEM/BEM approach

We propose a coupled Boundary Element Method (BEM) and Finite Element Method (FEM) for modeling damage growth in structures. BEM offers the flexibility of modeling large domains efficiently while the nonlinear damage growth is accurately accounted by a local FEM mesh. An integral-type nonlocal continuum damage mechanics with adapting FEM mesh is used to model multiple damage zones and follow their propagation in the structure. Strong form coupling, BEM hosted, is achieved using Lagrange multipliers and the solution is obtained by a monolithic Newton method that is used to solve both domains simultaneously.
The coupled BEM/FEM approach is verified by a set of convergence studies,the reference is an entire FEM model of the whole problem. We study the convergence of the method with respect to mesh refinement in the FEM and BEM domains. In addition, the method is applied to multiple fractures growth benchmark problems and shows good agreement with the literature.

Author(s):

Mostafa Mobasher    
Columbia University
United States

Haim Waisman    
Columbia University
United States