Multiscale Modeling of Advanced Materials for Damage Prediction and Structural Health Monitoring

abstract: Advanced aerospace materials, including fiber reinforced polymer and ceramic matrix composites, are increasingly being used in critical and demanding applications, challenging the current damage prediction, detection, and quantification methodologies. Multiscale computational models offer key advantages over traditional analysis techniques and can provide the necessary capabilities for the development of a comprehensive virtual structural health monitoring (SHM) framework. Virtual SHM has the potential to drastically improve the design and analysis of aerospace components through coupling the complementary capabilities of models able to predict the initiation and propagation of damage under a wide range of loading and environmental scenarios, simulate interrogation methods for damage detection and quantification, and assess the health of a structure. A major component of the virtual SHM framework involves having micromechanics-based multiscale composite models that can provide the elastic, inelastic, and damage behavior of composite material systems under mechanical and thermal loading conditions and in the presence of microstructural complexity and variability. Quantification of the role geometric and architectural variability in the composite microstructure plays in the local and global composite behavior is essential to the development of appropriate scale-dependent unit cells and boundary conditions for the multiscale model. Once the composite behavior is predicted and variability effects assessed, wave-based SHM simulation models serve to provide knowledge on the probability of detection and characterization accuracy of damage present in the composite. The research presented in this dissertation provides the foundation for a comprehensive SHM framework for advanced aerospace materials. The developed models enhance the prediction of damage formation as a result of ceramic matrix composite processing, improve the understanding of the effects of architectural and geometric variability in polymer matrix composites, and provide an accurate and computational efficient modeling scheme for simulating guided wave excitation, propagation, interaction with damage, and sensing in a range of materials. The methodologies presented in this research represent substantial progress toward the development of an accurate and generalized virtual SHM framework.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Mechanical Engineering 201

High fidelity fluid-structure turbulence modeling using an immersed-body method

There is an increasing need for turbulence models with fluid-structure interaction (FSI) in many industrial and environmental high Reynolds number flows. Since the complicated structure boundaries move in turbulent flows, it is quite challenging to numerically apply boundary conditions on these moving fluid-structure interfaces. To achieve accurate and reliable results from numerical FSI simulations in turbulent flows, a high fidelity fluid-structure turbulence model is developed using an immersed-body method in this thesis. It does this by coupling a finite element multiphase fluid model and a combined finite-discrete element solid model via a novel thin shell mesh surrounding solid surfaces. The FSI turbulence model presented has four novelties. Firstly, an unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) k−ε turbulence model is coupled with an immersed-body method to model FSI by using this thin shell mesh. Secondly, to reduce the computational cost, a log-law wall function is used within this thin shell to resolve the flow near the boundary layer. Thirdly, in order to improve the accuracy of the wall function, a novel shell mesh external-surface intersection approach is introduced to identify sharp solid-fluid interfaces. Fourthly, the model has been extended to simulate highly compressible gas coupled with fracturing solids. This model has been validated by various test cases and results are in good agreement with both experimental and numerical data in published literature. This model is capable to simulate the aerodynamic and hydrodynamic details of fluids and the stress, vibration, deformation and motion of structures simultaneously. Finally, this model has been applied to several industrial applications including a floating structure being moved around by complex hydrodynamic flows involving wave breaking; a blasting engineering simulation with shock waves, fracture propagation, gas-solid interaction and flying fragments; fluid dynamics, flow-induced vibrations, flow-induced fractures of a full-scale vertical axis turbine. Some useful conclusions, e.g. how to model them, how to make them stable and how to predict when they will break, are obtained by this FSI model when applying it to the above applications.Open Acces

SOLID-SHELL FINITE ELEMENT MODELS FOR EXPLICIT SIMULATIONS OF CRACK PROPAGATION IN THIN STRUCTURES

Crack propagation in thin shell structures due to cutting is conveniently simulated using explicit finite element approaches, in view of the high nonlinearity of the problem. Solidshell elements are usually preferred for the discretization in the presence of complex material behavior and degradation phenomena such as delamination, since they allow for a correct representation of the thickness geometry. However, in solid-shell elements the small thickness leads to a very high maximum eigenfrequency, which imply very small stable time-steps. A new selective mass scaling technique is proposed to increase the time-step size without affecting accuracy. New ”directional” cohesive interface elements are used in conjunction with selective mass scaling to account for the interaction with a sharp blade in cutting processes of thin ductile shells

Theoretical and numerical comparison of hyperelastic and hypoelastic formulations for Eulerian non-linear elastoplasticity

The aim of this paper is to compare a hyperelastic with a hypoelastic model describing the Eulerian dynamics of solids in the context of non-linear elastoplastic deformations. Specifically, we consider the well-known hypoelastic Wilkins model, which is compared against a hyperelastic model based on the work of Godunov and Romenski. First, we discuss some general conceptual differences between the two approaches. Second, a detailed study of both models is proposed, where differences are made evident at the aid of deriving a hypoelastic-type model corresponding to the hyperelastic model and a particular equation of state used in this paper. Third, using the same high order ADER Finite Volume and Discontinuous Galerkin methods on fixed and moving unstructured meshes for both models, a wide range of numerical benchmark test problems has been solved. The numerical solutions obtained for the two different models are directly compared with each other. For small elastic deformations, the two models produce very similar solutions that are close to each other. However, if large elastic or elastoplastic deformations occur, the solutions present larger differences.Comment: 14 figure