Hello all,

Last year when I started implementing interface elements to model material failure, I realized that the formulation is easy except how to generate a mesh with interface elements. I did a googling to search for such a free program. Amazingly, I did not find any although there are many researchers working on the fracture mechanics field. 

So, I wrote a small object-oriented C++ program which reads a FE mesh, duplicates nodes and insert interface elements where asked. The program is able to 

(1) insert 1D/2D interface elements everywhere in a FE mesh

(2) insert i1D/2D nterface elements along material interfaces, useful for delamination analysis or interface debonding

Hello,

My name is Nguyen Vinh Phu, a PhD student at Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. I have been working with Prof. Bert Sluys on a project named "Coarse graining of failure in heterogeneous solids" since July 2007. I am finishing my work and therefore seeking for a postdoctoral position starting after July 2011.

My expertise in computational solid mechanics includes

(1) Finite elements, extended finite elements and meshless methods.

Hi all,

I am conducting some cohesive crack simulations within the framework of XFEM. The cohesive model is an initially rigid traction-separation law for mode I.  In order to deal with negative values of the normal sepration/jump, I use a penalty stiffness K.

The example is pretty simple: an un-notched three point bending test where a crack is initiated at the bottom edge of the beam and grow vertically upwards to the upper edge. During the simulation, some negative jumps are observed. The convergence is very much dependent on the penalty stiffness K used. Even for some cases, no convergence obtained at all. I tried K from 10^3 to 10^10.

Could you please share your experiences in dealing with crack penetration in crack grow simulation?

Multiscale Methods for Fracture

Hello all

I have spent a large amount of time trying to undertstand the multiscale aggregating method (MAD) of Prof. Belytschko. Unfortunately, I still can not compltely understand the method. 

If there is anyone here in the forum already gets clear about the method, please help me.

 Phu

Dear All,

Could somebody indicate me some literature about the topic "2D
approximation of heterogeneous 3D media"?

In particular I am interested to address following issues:

1) Under which conditions averaging thermal conductivity and young
modulus (or more general, mechanical behaviour) on multiple 2D crossections of an heterogeneous "random"
material can be a good approximation for the behaviour of the real 3D
microstructure

2) Is there any  theorem which shows the equivalence between averaging
on n 2D crossections of a certain media and taking the single
real 3D structure for n sufficiently large?

Thank you very much in advance.

Phu

Hello everybody,

I am solving a FE problem on a hetereogeneous medium consisting of rigid phase (Young modulus of about 100 000 N/mm2), a softer phase (Young modulus of 20 000 N/mm2) and pore (Young modulus of 1 N/mm2). The reason that I have to mesh the pore is that there are some elements of rigid phase hanging out in the pores. So, if I do not mesh the pore, then my FE matrix is singular. 

Dear all,

 I am wondering if there exists a mesher that can generate finite element mesh (2D or 3D) from imaging data? It would be much nicer if there are somes and free.

 Thanks a lot in advance for your help.

 Vinh Phu

Hello,

I am Nguyen Vinh Phu, a 26 years old Vietnamese  guy. Graduated from Civil engineering department in Vietnam in 2003, I then attended the EMMC program, a master course taught by Hochiminh university of technology (Vietnam) and University of Liege (Belgium). My master thesis entitled "An object-oriented approach to the extended finite element method with applications to fracture mechanics" where I wrote the XFEM libary named OpenXFEM++ used to solve 2D crack growth simulation without remeshing. Thanks to this work, I got a job to implement XFEM in the commerical finite element code SYSTUS of ESI company, France.