Space-Time Mixed System Formulation of Phase-Field Fracture Optimal Control Problems

In this work, space-time formulations and Galerkin discretizations for phase-field fracture optimal control problems are considered. The fracture irreversibility constraint is formulated on the time-continuous level and is regularized by means of penalization. The optimization scheme is formulated in terms of the reduced approach and then solved with a Newton method. To this end, the state, adjoint, tangent, and adjoint Hessian equations are derived. The key focus is on the design of appropriate function spaces and the rigorous justification of all Fréchet derivatives that require fourth-order regularizations. Therein, a second-order time derivative on the phase-field variable appears, which is reformulated as a mixed first-order-in-time system. These derivations are carefully established for all four equations. Finally, the corresponding time-stepping schemes are derived by employing a dG(r) discretization in time

Graded damage in quasi-brittle solids

A novel approach to damage modeling for quasi-brittle solids is presented relying upon a differential inclusion that is closely related to the one of implicit gradient models. The proposed formulation naturally fits in the so-called nonlocal standard approach, whereby the framework of generalized standard materials is extended to include gradients of internal variables to account for the physics of the fracture phenomenon in a regularized sense, that is, via extended constitutive equations in which a length scale parameter brings to the macro level information about material microstructure. This concept is fully embodied into the present approach to quasi-brittle fracture, whereby progressive damage occurs in layers of finite thickness where the gradient of damage is bounded and a fully damaged region is understood as a fracture with no ambiguity. Key to the effective implementation of the model are the choice of two constitutive functions and the implicit tracking of regions in a state of progressive damage via Lagrange multipliers acting on internal constraints. The ideas are developed for a general Cauchy continuum and representative numerical simulations are included that demonstrate the model capabilities

Fourth order phase-field model for local max-ent approximants applied to crack propagation

We apply a fourth order phase-field model for fracture based on local maximum entropy (LME) approximants. The higher order continuity of the meshfree LME approximants allows to directly solve the fourth order phase-field equations without splitting the fourth order differential equation into two second order differential equations. We will first show that the crack surface can be captured more accurately in the fourth order model. Furthermore, less nodes are needed for the fourth order model to resolve the crack path. Finally, we demonstrate the performance of the proposed meshfree fourth order phase-field formulation for 5 representative numerical examples. Computational results will be compared to analytical solutions within linear elastic fracture mechanics and experimental data for three-dimensional crack propagation

A phase field approach for optimal boundary control of damage processes in two-dimensional viscoelastic media

In this work we investigate a phase field model for damage processes in two-dimensional viscoelastic media with nonhomogeneous Neumann data describing external boundary forces. In the first part we establish global-in-time existence, uniqueness, a priori estimates and continuous dependence of strong solutions on the data. The main difficulty is caused by the irreversibility as well as boundedness of the phase field variable which results in a doubly constrained PDE system. In the last part we consider an optimal control problem where a cost functional penalizes maximal deviations from prescribed damage profiles. The goal is to minimize the cost functional with respect to exterior forces acting on the boundary which play the role of the control variable in the considered model . To this end, we prove existence of minimizers and study a family of "local'' approximations via adapted cost functionals

A phase field approach for optimal boundary control of damage processes in two-dimensional viscoelastic media

In this work we investigate a phase field model for damage processes in two-dimensional viscoelastic media with nonhomogeneous Neumann data describing external boundary forces. In the first part we establish global-in-time existence, uniqueness, a priori estimates and continuous dependence of strong solutions on the data. The main difficulty is caused by the irreversibility of the phase field variable which results in a constrained PDE system. In the last part we consider an optimal control problem where a cost functional penalizes maximal deviations from prescribed damage profiles. The goal is to minimize the cost functional with respect to exterior forces acting on the boundary which play the role of the control variable in the considered model. To this end, we prove existence of minimizers and study a family of "local'' approximations via adapted cost functionals

Development of robust and efficient solution strategies for coupled problems

Det er mange modeller i moderne vitenskap hvor sammenkoblingen mellom forskjellige fysiske prosesser er svært viktig. Disse finner man for eksempel i forbindelse med lagring av karbondioksid i undervannsreservoarer, flyt i kroppsvev, kreftsvulstvekst og geotermisk energiutvinning. Denne avhandlingen har to fokusområder som er knyttet til sammenkoblede modeller. Det første er å utvikle pålitelige og effektive tilnærmingsmetoder, og det andre er utviklingen av en ny modell som tar for seg flyt i et porøst medium som består av to forskjellige materialer. For tilnærmingsmetodene har det vært et spesielt fokus på splittemetoder. Dette er metoder hvor hver av de sammenkoblede modellene håndteres separat, og så itererer man mellom dem. Dette gjøres i hovedsak fordi man kan utnytte tilgjengelig teori og programvare for å løse hver undermodell svært effektivt. Ulempen er at man kan ende opp med løsningsalgoritmer for den sammenkoblede modellen som er trege, eller ikke kommer frem til noen løsning i det hele tatt. I denne avhandlingen har tre forskjellige metoder for å forbedre splittemetoder blitt utviklet for tre forskjellige sammenkoblede modeller. Den første modellen beskriver flyt gjennom deformerbart porøst medium og er kjent som Biot ligningene. For å anvende en splittemetode på denne modellen har et stabiliseringsledd blitt tilført. Dette sikrer at metoden konvergerer (kommer frem til en løsning), men dersom man ikke skalerer stabiliseringsleddet riktig kan det ta veldig lang tid. Derfor har et intervall hvor den optimale skaleringen av stabiliseringsleddet befinner seg blitt identifisert, og utfra dette presenteres det en måte å praktisk velge den riktige skaleringen på. Den andre modellen er en fasefeltmodell for sprekkpropagering. Denne modellen løses vanligvis med en splittemetode som er veldig treg, men konvergent. For å forbedre dette har en ny akselerasjonsmetode har blitt utviklet. Denne anvendes som et postprosesseringssteg til den klassiske splittemetoden, og utnytter både overrelaksering og Anderson akselerasjon. Disse to forskjellige akselerasjonsmetodene har kompatible styrker i at overrelaksering akselererer når man er langt fra løsningen (som er tilfellet når sprekken propagerer), og Anderson akselerasjon fungerer bra når man er nærme løsningen. For å veksle mellom de to metodene har et kriterium basert på residualfeilen blitt brukt. Resultatet er en pålitelig akselerasjonsmetode som alltid akselererer og ofte er svært effektiv. Det siste modellen kalles Cahn-Larché ligningene og er også en fasefeltmodell, men denne beskriver elastisitet i et medium bestående av to elastiske materialer som kan bevege seg basert på overflatespenningen mellom dem. Dette problemet er spesielt utfordrende å løse da det verken er lineært eller konvekst. For å håndtere dette har en ny måte å behandle tidsavhengigheten til det underliggende koblede problemet på blitt utviklet. Dette leder til et diskret system som er ekvivalent med et konvekst minimeringsproblem, som derfor er velegnet til å løses med de fleste numeriske optimeringsmetoder, også splittemetoder. Den nye modellen som har blitt utviklet er en utvidelse av Cahn-Larché ligningene og har fått navnet Cahn-Hilliard-Biot. Dette er fordi ligningene utgjør en fasefelt modell som beskriver flyt i et deformerbart porøst medium med to poroelastiske materialer. Disse kan forflytte seg basert på overflatespenning, elastisk spenning, og poretrykk, og det er tenkt at modellen kan anvendes i forbindelse med kreftsvulstmodellering.There are many applications where the study of coupled physical processes is of great importance. These range from the life sciences with flow in deformable human tissue to structural engineering with fracture propagation in elastic solids. In this doctoral dissertation, there is a twofold focus on coupled problems. Firstly, robust and efficient solution strategies, with a focus on iterative decoupling methods, have been applied to several coupled systems of equations. Secondly, a new thermodynamically consistent coupled system of equations is proposed. Solution strategies are developed for three different coupled problems; the quasi-static linearized Biot equations that couples flow through porous materials and elastic deformation of the solid medium, variational phase-field models for brittle fracture that couple a phase-field equation for fracture evolution with linearized elasticity, and the Cahn-Larché equations that model elastic effects in a two-phase elastic material and couples an extended Cahn-Hilliard phase-field equation and linearized elasticity. Finally, the new system of equations that is proposed models flow through a two-phase deformable porous material where the solid phase evolution is governed by interfacial forces as well as effects from both the fluid and elastic properties of the material. In the work that concerns the quasi-static linearized Biot equations, the focus is on the fixed-stress splitting scheme, which is a popular method for sequentially solving the flow and elasticity subsystems of the full model. Using such a method is beneficial as it allows for the use of readily available solvers for the subproblems; however, a stabilizing term is required for the scheme to converge. It is well known that the convergence properties of the method strongly depend on how this term is chosen, and here, the optimal choice of it is addressed both theoretically and practically. An interval where the optimal stabilization parameter lies is provided, depending on the material parameters. In addition, two different ways of optimizing the parameter are proposed. The first is a brute-force method that relies on the mesh independence of the scheme's optimal stabilization parameter, and the second is valid for low-permeable media and utilizes an equivalence between the fixed-stress splitting scheme and the modified Richardson iteration. Regarding the variational phase-field model for brittle fracture propagation, the focus is on improving the convergence properties of the most commonly used solution strategy with an acceleration method. This solution strategy relies on a staggered scheme that alternates between solving the elasticity and phase-field subproblems in an iterative way. This is known to be a robust method compared to the monolithic Newton method. However, the staggered scheme often requires many iterations to converge to satisfactory precision. The contribution of this work is to accelerate the solver through a new acceleration method that combines Anderson acceleration and over-relaxation, dynamically switching back and forth between them depending on a criterion that takes the residual evolution into account. The acceleration scheme takes advantage of the strengths of both Anderson acceleration and over-relaxation, and the fact that they are complementary when applied to this problem, resulting in a significant speed-up of the convergence. Moreover, the method is applied as a post-processing technique to the increments of the solver, and can thus be implemented with minor modifications to readily available software. The final contribution toward solution strategies for coupled problems focuses on the Cahn-Larché equations. This is a model for linearized elasticity in a medium with two elastic phases that evolve with respect to interfacial forces and elastic effects. The system couples linearized elasticity and an extended Cahn-Hilliard phase-field equation. There are several challenging features with regards to solution strategies for this system including nonlinear coupling terms, and the fourth-order term that comes from the Cahn-Hilliard subsystem. Moreover, the system is nonlinear and non-convex with respect to both the phase-field and the displacement. In this work, a new semi-implicit time discretization that extends the standard convex-concave splitting method applied to the double-well potential from the Cahn-Hilliard subsystem is proposed. The extension includes special treatment for the elastic energy, and it is shown that the resulting discrete system is equivalent to a convex minimization problem. Furthermore, an alternating minimization solver is proposed for the fully discrete system, together with a convergence proof that includes convergence rates. Through numerical experiments, it becomes evident that the newly proposed discretization method leads to a system that is far better conditioned for linearization methods than standard time discretizations. Finally, a new model for flow through a two-phase deformable porous material is proposed. The two poroelastic phases have distinct material properties, and their interface evolves according to a generalized Ginzburg–Landau energy functional. As a result, a model that extends the Cahn-Larché equations to poroelasticity is proposed, and essential coupling terms for several applications are highlighted. These include solid tumor growth, biogrout, and wood growth. Moreover, the coupled set of equations is shown to be a generalized gradient flow. This implies that the system is thermodynamically consistent and makes a toolbox of analysis and solvers available for further study of the model.Doktorgradsavhandlin

Gradient-enhanced damage growth modelling of ductile fracture

We present a gradient enhanced damage model for ductile fracture modeling, describing the degraded material response coupled to temperature. Continuum thermodynamics is used to represent components of the energy dissipation as induced by the effective material response, thermal effects and damage evolution. As prototype for the effective material serves the viscoplastic Johnson-Cook constitutive model. The continuum damage evolution of Lemaitre type is focusing the degradation of the shear response eventually leading to ductile shear failure. A novel feature of the paper is the damage driving dissipation rate, allowing for elastic and plastic components separated by a global damage threshold for accumulation of inelastic damage driving energy. In the application to a dynamic split-Hopkinson test and two quasi-static tensile tests, the gradient damage model is compared to the corresponding local model. For isothermal conditions, the examples show that both damage models exhibit mesh convergent behavior when using the global damage threshold

Modeling, Discretization, Optimization, and Simulation of Phase-Field Fracture Problems

This course is devoted to phase-field fracture methods. Four different sessions are centered around modeling, discretizations, solvers, adaptivity, optimization, simulations and current developments. The key focus is on research work and teaching materials concerned with the accurate, efficient and robust numerical modeling. These include relationships of model, discretization, and material parameters and their influence on discretizations and the nonlinear (Newton-type methods) and linear numerical solution. One application of such high-fidelity forward models is in optimal control, where a cost functional is minimized by controlling Neumann boundary conditions. Therein, as a side-project (which is itself novel), space-time phase-field fracture models have been developed and rigorously mathematically proved. Emphasis in the entire course is on a fruitful mixture of theory, algorithmic concepts and exercises. Besides these lecture notes, further materials are available, such as for instance the open-source libraries pfm-cracks and DOpElib. The prerequisites are lectures in continuum mechanics, introduction to numerical methods, finite elements, and numerical methods for ODEs and PDEs. In addition, functional analysis (FA) and theory of PDEs is helpful, but for most parts not necessarily mandatory. Discussions with many colleagues in our research work and funding from the German Research Foundation within the Priority Program 1962 (DFG SPP 1962) within the subproject Optimizing Fracture Propagation using a Phase-Field Approach with the project number 314067056 (D. Khimin, T. Wick), and support of the French-German University (V. Kosin) through the French-German Doctoral college ``Sophisticated Numerical and Testing Approaches" (CDFA-DFDK 19-04) is gratefully acknowledged