Membrane finite element method for simulating fluid flow in porous medium

A new membrane finite element method for modeling fluid flow in a porous medium is presented in order to quickly and accurately simulate the geo-membrane fabric used in civil engineering. It is based on discontinuous finite element theory, and can be easily coupled with the normal Galerkin finite element method. Based on the saturated seepage equation, the element coefficient matrix of the membrane element method is derived, and a geometric transform relation for the membrane element between a global coordinate system and a local coordinate system is obtained. A method for the determination of the fluid flux conductivity of the membrane element is presented. This method provides a basis for determining discontinuous parameters in discontinuous finite element theory. An anti-seepage problem regarding the foundation of a building is analyzed by coupling the membrane finite element method with the normal Galerkin finite element method. The analysis results demonstrate the utility and superiority of the membrane finite element method in fluid flow analysis of a porous medium.

DEFORMATION ANALYSIS OF SHEET METAL SINGLE-POINT INCREMENTAL FORMING BY FINITE ELEMENT METHOD SIMULATION

Single-point incremental forming （SPIF） is an innovational sheet metal forming method without dedicated dies, which belongs to rapid prototyping technology. In generalizing the SPIF of sheet metal, the deformation analysis on forming process becomes an important and useful method for the planning of shell products, the choice of material, the design of the forming process and the planning of the forming tool. Using solid brick elements, the finite element method（FEM） model of truncated pyramid was established. Based on the theory of anisotropy and assumed strain formulation, the SPIF processes with different parameters were simulated. The resulted comparison between the simulations and the experiments shows that the FEM model is feasible and effective. Then, according to the simulated forming process, the deformation pattern of SPIF can be summarized as the combination of plane-stretching deformation and bending deformation. And the study about the process parameters＇ impact on deformation shows that the process parameter of interlayer spacing is a dominant factor on the deformation. Decreasing interlayer spacing, the strain of one step decreases and the formability of blank will be improved. With bigger interlayer spacing, the plastic deformation zone increases and the forming force will be bigger.

Texture evolution and inhomogeneous deformation of polycrystalline Cu based on crystal plasticity finite element method and particle swarm optimization algorithm

Texture evolution and inhomogeneous deformation of polycrystalline Cu during uniaxial compression are investigated at the grain scale by combining crystal plasticity finite element method(CPFEM) with particle swarm optimization(PSO) algorithm. The texture-based representative volume element(TBRVE) is used in the crystal plasticity finite element model, where a given number of crystallographic orientations are obtained by means of discretizing the orientation distribution function(ODF) based on electron backscattered diffraction(EBSD) experiment data. Three-dimensional grains with different morphologies are generated on the basis of Voronoi tessellation. The PSO algorithm plays a significant role in identifying the material parameters and saving computational time. The macroscopic stress–strain curve is predicted based on CPFEM, where the simulation results are in good agreement with the experimental ones. Therefore, CPFEM is a powerful candidate for capturing the texture evolution and clarifying the inhomogeneous plastic deformation of polycrystalline Cu. The simulation results indicate that the <110> fiber texture is generated finally with the progression of plastic deformation. The inhomogeneous distribution of rotation angles lays the foundation for the inhomogeneous deformation of polycrystalline Cu in terms of grain scale.

A control volume based finite element method for simulating incompressible two-phase flow in heterogeneous porous media and its application to reservoir engineering

Applying the standard Galerkin finite element method for solving flow problems in porous media encounters some difficulties such as numerical oscillation at the shock front and discontinuity of the velocity field on element faces.Discontinuity of velocity field leads this method not to conserve mass locally.Moreover,the accuracy and stability of a solution is highly affected by a non-conservative method.In this paper,a three dimensional control volume finite element method is developed for twophase fluid flow simulation which overcomes the deficiency of the standard finite element method,and attains high-orders of accuracy at a reasonable computational cost.Moreover,this method is capable of handling heterogeneity in a very rational way.A fully implicit scheme is applied to temporal discretization of the governing equations to achieve an unconditionally stable solution.The accuracy and efficiency of the method are verified by simulating some waterflooding experiments.Some representative examples are presented to illustrate the capability of the method to simulate two-phase fluid flow in heterogeneous porous media.

Static and free vibration analyses of functionally graded porous variable-thickness plates using an edge-based smoothed finite element method

The main purpose of this paper is to present numerical results of static bending and free vibration of functionally graded porous(FGP) variable-thickness plates by using an edge-based smoothed finite element method(ES-FEM) associate with the mixed interpolation of tensorial components technique for the three-node triangular element(MITC3), so-called ES-MITC3. This ES-MITC3 element is performed to eliminate the shear locking problem and to enhance the accuracy of the existing MITC3 element. In the ES-MITC3 element, the stiffness matrices are obtained by using the strain smoothing technique over the smoothing domains formed by two adjacent MITC3 triangular elements sharing an edge. Materials of the plate are FGP with a power-law index(k) and maximum porosity distributions(U) in the forms of cosine functions. The influences of some geometric parameters, material properties on static bending, and natural frequency of the FGP variable-thickness plates are examined in detail.

Finite element method for coupled diffusion-deformation theory in polymeric gel based on slip-link model

A polymeric gel is an aggregate of polymers and solvent molecules, which can retain its shape after a large deformation. The deformation behavior of polymeric gels was often described based on the Flory-Rehner free energy function without considering the influence of chain entanglements on the mechanical behavior of gels. In this paper,a new hybrid free energy function for gels is formulated by combining the EdwardsVilgis slip-link model and the Flory-Huggins mixing model to quantify the time-dependent concurrent process of large deformation and mass transport. The finite element method is developed to analyze examples of swelling-induced deformation. Simulation results are compared with available experimental data and show good agreement. The influence of entanglements on the time-dependent deformation behavior of gels is also demonstrated.The study of large deformation kinetics of polymeric gel is useful for diverse applications.

Surrounding rock deformation analysis of underground caverns with multi-body finite element method

Discontinuous deformation problems are common in rock engineering. Numerical analysis methods based on system models of the discrete body can better solve these problems. One of the most effective solutions is discontinuous deformation analysis （DDA） method, but the DDA method brings about rock embedding problems when it uses the strain assumption in elastic deformation and adopts virtual springs to simulate the contact problems. The multi-body finite element method （FEM） proposed in this paper can solve the problems of contact and deformation of blocks very well because it integrates the FEM and multi-body system dynamics theory. It is therefore a complete method for solving discontinuous deformation problems through balance equations of the contact surface and for simulating the displacement of whole blocks. In this study, this method was successfully used for deformation analysis of underground caverns in stratified rock. The simulation results indicate that the multi-body FEM can show contact forces and the stress states on contact surfaces better than DDA, and that the results calculated with the multi-body FEM are more consistent with engineering practice than those calculated with DDA method.

An explicit finite element method for dynamic analysis in three-medium coupling system and its application

In this paper, an explicit finite element method to analyze the dynamic responses of three-medium coupled systems with any terrain is developed on the basis of the numerical simulation of the continuous conditions on the bounda-ries among fluid saturated porous medium, elastic single-phase medium and ideal fluid medium. This method is a very effective one with the characteristic of high calculating speed and small memory needed because the formulae for this explicit finite element method have the characteristic of decoupling, and which does not need to solve sys-tem of linear equations. The method is applied to analyze the dynamic response of a reservoir with considering the dynamic interactions among water, dam, sediment and basement rock. The vertical displacement at the top point of the dam is calculated and some conclusions are given.

PENALTY FINITE ELEMENT METHOD FOR NONLINEAR DYNAMIC RESPONSE OF VISCOUS FLUID-SATURATED BIPHASE POROUS MEDIA

The governing equations as well as boundary land initial conditions for nonlinear dynamic response problems of viscous fluid-saturated biphase porous medium model, based on mixture theory, are presented. With Galerkin weighted residual method the corresponding nonlinear dynamic penalty finite element equation, in which the dependencies of volume fraction and permeation coefficients an deformation are included, is obtained. The iteration solution method of the nonlinear system equation is also discussed. As a numerical example, the dynamic response of a porous medium column under impulsive loading action is analyzed with the developed finite element program. The numerical results demonstrate the efficiency and correctness of the method.

A dynamic large-deformation particle finite element method for geotechnical applications based on Abaqus

In this paper,the application of Abaqus-based particle finite element method(PFEM)is extended from static to dynamic large deformation.The PFEM is based on periodic mesh regeneration with Delaunay triangulation to avoid mesh distortion.Additional mesh smoothing and boundary node smoothing techniques are incorporated to improve the mesh quality and solution accuracy.The field variables are mapped from the old to the new mesh using the closest point projection method to minimize the mapping error.The procedures of the proposed Abaqus-based dynamic PFEM(Abaqus-DPFEM)analysis and its implementation in Abaqus are detailed.The accuracy and robustness of the proposed approach are examined via four illustrative numerical examples.The numerical results show a satisfactory agreement with published results and further confirm the applicability of the Abaqus-DPFEM to solving dynamic large-deformation problems in geotechnical engineering.

ANALYSIS OF ROLLING BY ELASTO-PLASTIC FINITE DEFORMATION CONTACT BOUNDARY ELEMENT METHOD

A multinonlinear boundary element method is established dealing with elasto plastic finite deformation contact problem, and it is employed to analysis rolling process. With rollers as elastic bodies, workpieces as elastio plastic bodies, rolling problem can be viewed as a frictional elasto plastic contact problem. With fewer assumptions in the simulation of the rolling process, a novel and accurate method is proposed for analysis of rolling problems.

THE RANDOM VARIATIONAL PRINCIPLE IN FINITE DEFORMATION OF ELASTICITY AND FINITE ELEMENT METHOD

In the present paper, we hare mtroduced the random materials. loads. geometricalshapes, force and displacement boundary condition directly. into the functionalvariational formula, by. use of a small parameter perturbation method, a unifiedrandom variational principle in finite defomation of elastieity and nonlinear randomfinite element method are esiablished, and used.for reliability, analysis of structures.Numerical examples showed that the methods have the advontages of simple andconvenient program implementation and are effective for the probabilistic problems inmechanics.

GURTIN VARIATIONAL PRINCIPLE AND FINITE ELEMENT SIMULATION FOR DYNAMICAL PROBLEMS OF FLUID-SATURATED POROUS MEDIA

Based on the theory of porous media, a general Gurtin variational principle for the initial boundary value problem of dynamical response of fluid-saturated elastic porous media is developed by assuming infinitesimal deformation and incompressible constituents of the solid and fluid phase. The finite element formulation based on this variational principle is also derived. As the functional of the variational principle is a spatial integral of the convolution formulation, the general finite element discretization in space results in symmetrical differential-integral equations in the time domain. In some situations, the differential-integral equations can be reduced to symmetrical differential equations and, as a numerical example, it is employed to analyze the reflection of one-dimensional longitudinal wave in a fluid-saturated porous solid. The numerical results can provide further understanding of the wave propagation in porous media.

Validation and application of three-dimensional discontinuous deformation analysis with tetrahedron finite element meshed block

In the last decade, three dimensional discontin- uous deformation analyses （3D DDA） has attracted more and more attention of researchers and geotechnical engineers worldwide. The original DDA formulation utilizes a linear displacement function to describe the block movement and deformation, which would cause block expansion under rigid body rotation and thus limit its capability to model block de- formation. In this paper, 3D DDA is coupled with tetrahe- dron finite elements to tackle these two problems. Tetrahe- dron is the simplest in the 3D domain and makes it easy to implement automatic discretization, even for complex topol- ogy shape. Furthermore, element faces will remain planar and element edges will remain straight after deformation for tetrahedron finite elements and polyhedral contact detection schemes can be used directly. The matrices of equilibrium equations for this coupled method are given in detail and an effective contact searching algorithm is suggested. Valida- tion is conducted by comparing the results of the proposed coupled method with that of physical model tests using one of the most common failure modes, i.e., wedge failure. Most of the failure modes predicted by the coupled method agree with the physical model results except for 4 cases out of the total 65 cases. Finally, a complex rockslide example demon- strates the robustness and versatility of the coupled method.

Die structure optimization of equal channel angular extrusion for AZ31 magnesium alloy based on finite element method

Three-dimensional（3D） geometric models with different comer angles （90° and 120°） and with or without inner round fillets in the bottom die were designed. Some important process parameters were regarded as the calculation conditions used in DEFORMTM-3D software, such as stress--strain data of compression test for AZ31 magnesium, temperatures of die and billet, and friction coefficient. Influence of friction coefficient on deformation process was discussed. The results show that reasonable lubrication condition is important to plastic deformation. The change characteristics for distributions of effective stress and strain during an equal channel angular extrusion （ECAE） process with inner angle of 90° and without fillets at outer comer were described. Inhomogeneity index （C） was defined and deformation heterogeneity of ECAE was analyzed from the simulation and experiment results. The deformation homogeneity caused by fillets at outer comer increased compared with the die without fillets. The cumulated maximum strains decrease with increasing the fillets of outer comer in ECAE die and the inner comer angle. The analysis results show that better structures of ECAE die including appropriate outer comer fillet and the inner comer angle of 90° for the die can improve the strain and ensure plastic deformation homogenization to a certain extent. The required extrusion force drops with increasing the fillet made at outer comer in ECAE die. It is demonstrated that the prediction results are in good agreement with experiments and the theoretical calculation and the research conclusions in literatures.

Prediction of grain scale plasticity of NiTi shape memory alloy based on crystal plasticity finite element method

Grain scale plasticity of NiTi shape memory alloy(SMA)during uniaxial compression deformation at 400℃was investigated through two-dimensional crystal plasticity finite element simulation and corresponding analysis based on the obtained orientation data.Stress and strain distributions of the deformed NiTi SMA samples confirm that there exhibits a heterogeneous plastic deformation at grain scale.Statistically stored dislocation(SSD)density and geometrically necessary dislocation(GND)density were further used in order to illuminate the microstructure evolution during uniaxial compression.SSD is responsible for sustaining plastic deformation and it increases along with the increase of plastic strain.GND plays an important role in accommodating compatible deformation between individual grains and thus it is correlated with the misorientation between neighboring grains,namely,a high GND density corresponds to large misorientation between grains and a low GND density corresponds to small misorientation between grains.

An RKDG finite element method for the one-dimensional inviscid compressible gas dynamics equations in a Lagrangian coordinate

In this paper,Runge-Kutta Discontinuous Galerkin（RKDG） finite element method is presented to solve the onedimensional inviscid compressible gas dynamic equations in a Lagrangian coordinate.The equations are discretized by the DG method in space and the temporal discretization is accomplished by the total variation diminishing Runge-Kutta method.A limiter based on the characteristic field decomposition is applied to maintain stability and non-oscillatory property of the RKDG method.For multi-medium fluid simulation,the two cells adjacent to the interface are treated differently from other cells.At first,a linear Riemann solver is applied to calculate the numerical ？ux at the interface.Numerical examples show that there is some oscillation in the vicinity of the interface.Then a nonlinear Riemann solver based on the characteristic formulation of the equation and the discontinuity relations is adopted to calculate the numerical ？ux at the interface,which suppresses the oscillation successfully.Several single-medium and multi-medium fluid examples are given to demonstrate the reliability and efficiency of the algorithm.

Finite Element Analysis for Effect of Roll Radius on Metal Deformation of Hot Rolling Plate

The deformation of rolling piece in hot rolling by flat roll with different radii is analyzed with three-dimensional large deformation thermo-mechanical coupling finite element method.The distribution laws of stress,strain and strain energy density in deformation zone with rolls of different radii were studied.The result indicated that under the same condition,the larger the roll radius is,the more vigorous the deformation in deformation zone is.

PREDICTION FOR FORMING LIMIT OF AL2024T3 SHEET BASED ON DAMAGE THEORY USING FINITE ELEMENT METHOD

This paper presents the application of anisotropic damage theory to the study of forming limit diagram of A12024T3 aluminum alloy sheet. In the prediction of limiting strains of the aluminum sheet structure, a finite element cell model has been constructed. The cell model consists of two phases, the aluminum alloy matrix and the intermetallic cluster. The material behavior of the aluminum alloy matrix is described with a fully coupled elasto-plastic damage constitutive equation. The intermetallic cluster is assumed to be elastic and brittle. By varying the stretching ratio, the limiting strains of the sheet under biaxial stretching have been predicted by using the necking criterion proposed. The prediction is in good agreement with the experimental findings. Moreover, the finite element cell model can provide information for understanding the microscopic damage mechanism of the aluminum alloy. Over-estimation of the limit strains may result if the effect of material damage is ignored in the sheet metal forming study.

FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF WAVE PROPAGATION IN FLUID-SATURATED POROUS MEDIA

With the porous media model based on mixture theory, a finite element formulation for dynamic transient analysis of fluid_saturated two_phase porous media is presented. Time integration of the equation, deduced with penalty method, can be performed by using implicit or explicit method. One_dimensional wave propagation in column under step loading and impulsive loading are analyzed with the developed finite element program. The obtained curves of displacements, velocities, effective stresses and pore pressures against time demonstrate the existence of wave propagation phenomena, which coincide with the theoretical results.