| Author | Ravi Guttal |
|---|---|
| Title | Hierarchical Finite Element Modeling of Plates and Shells |
| Year | 1996 |
| School | Civil Engineering |
| Institution | RPI |
| Abstract | The thesis is dedicated to exploring and investigating methodologies to enhance the performance and computational efficiency of hierarchical finite element methods for plate and shell models. A novel quadrature scheme and a family of hierarchical assumed strain elements have been developed to enhance the performance of the displacement-based hierarchical shell elements. The s-version of finite element method is developed for laminated plates and shells. By this technique the global domain is idealized using 2D Equivalent Single Layer (ESL) model. The regions where the ESL model errs badly in capturing localized phenomena are superimposed by a stack of 3D elements. Assumed strain formulation and selective polynomial order escalation in the two models are employed to maintain high level of computational efficiency. For an efficient solution of large scale hierarchic finite element systems an adaptive solver has been developed. A decision making methodology aimed at selecting an optimal solution strategy on the basis of estimated conditioning, sparsity and memory requirements for a given problem has been devised. Numerical experiments have been conducted on selected shell and 3D problems in the range of 1,000-100,000 degrees of freedom. |
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