a stabilized mixed finite element method for darcy flow we develop new stabilized mixed finite element methods for darcy flow stability and an a priori error estimate in the stability norm are established a wide variety of convergent finite elements present themselves unlike the classical galerkin formulation which requires highly specialized elements an interesting feature of the formulation is that there are no mesh dependent parameters numerical tests confirm the theoretical results 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

adjustments to zatsiorsky seluyanov s segment inertia parameters zatsiorsky et al in contemporary problems in biomechanics pp 272 291 crc press massachusetts 1990a obtained by means of a gamma ray scanning technique the relative body segment masses center of mass cm positions and radii of gyration for samples of college aged caucasian males and females although these data are the only available and comprehensive set of inertial parameters regarding young adult caucasians they have been rarely utilized for biomechanical analyses of subjects belonging to the same or a similar population the main reason is probably that zatsiorsky et al used bony landmarks as reference points for locating segment cms and defining segment lengths some of these landmarks were markedly distant from the joint centers currently used by most researchers as reference points the purpose of this study was to adjust the mean relative cm positions and radii of gyration reported by zatsiorsky et al in order to reference them to the joint centers or other commonly used landmarks rather than the original landmarks the adjustments were based on a number of carefully selected sources of anthropometric data

stress distribution at sharp and rounded v notches in quasi orthotropic plane abstract the eigensolution of the quasi orthotropic wedge problem is presented the degenerate orthotropic material of the wedge is characterized by doubled roots of the characteristic equation using the method of singular integral equations the distribution of the stress field in the quasi orthotropic plane weakened by semi infinite rounded v notch was obtained the edge of the notch was free of load and the asymptotic stress field defined by a stress intensity factor was set at the infinity on this basis the relationship between stress intensity factor at the sharp notch vertex and the normal stress at the vertex of corresponding rounded v notch with the same opening angle was established as it was shown in the example this relationship is asymptotic for finite notched bodies and it can be used to calculate a notch stress intensity factor based on a stress concentration results obtained for a notch rounded with small radius of curvature

boundary conditions at fluid permeable interfaces in porous media a variational approach abstract a general set of boundary conditions at fluid permeable interfaces between dissimilar fluid filled porous matrices is established starting from an extended hamilton rayleigh principle these conditions do include friction and inertial effects once linearized they encompass boundary conditions relative to volume darcy brinkman and to surface saffman beavers joseph dissipation effects

non conforming finite element methods for transmission eigenvalue problem abstract the transmission eigenvalue problem is an important and challenging topic arising in the inverse scattering theory in this paper for the helmholtz transmission eigenvalue problem we give a weak formulation which is a nonselfadjoint linear eigenvalue problem based on the weak formulation we first discuss the non conforming finite element approximation and prove the error estimates of the discrete eigenvalues obtained by the adini element the morley zienkiewicz element the modified zienkiewicz element et al and we report some numerical examples to validate the efficiency of our approach for solving transmission eigenvalue problem

mixed hp finite element method for linear elasticity with weakly imposed symmetry abstract the paper presents a generalization of arnold falk winther elements to meshes with elements of variable order the formulation is straightforward but the stability analysis involves a non trivial modification of interpolation operators the analysis addresses only h convergence but the presented numerical results indicate p convergence as well

a c0ipg method and its error estimates for the helmholtz transmission eigenvalue problem abstract the interior penalty methods using c 0 lagrange elements c 0 ipg developed in the last decade for the fourth order problems are an interesting topic in academia at present in this paper we apply the methods to the helmholtz transmission eigenvalue problem which is quadratic and non self adjoint and has important applications in the inverse scattering theory we propose a discrete scheme present a complete error analysis and first prove the c 0 ipg method can capture smooth eigenpairs efficiently using the argument in this paper we can prove that the c 0 ipg methods for the fourth order eigenvalue problems in the existing literature can also capture smooth eigenpairs efficiently numerical examples confirm our theoretical analysis

variational implementation of immersed finite element methods dirac distributions are often crucial components of the solid fluid coupling operators in immersed solution methods for fluid structure interaction fsi problems this is certainly so for methods like the immersed boundary method ibm or the immersed finite element method ifem where dirac distributions are approximated via smooth functions by contrast a truly variational formulation of immersed methods does not require the use of dirac distributions either formally or practically this has been shown in the finite element immersed boundary method feibm where the variational structure of the problem is exploited to avoid dirac distributions at both the continuous and the discrete level in this paper we generalize the feibm to the case where an incompressible newtonian fluid interacts with a general hyperelastic solid specifically we allow i the mass density to be different in the solid and the fluid ii the solid to be either viscoelastic of differential type or purely elastic and iii the solid to be either compressible or incompressible at the continuous level our variational formulation combines the natural stability estimates of the fluid and elasticity problems in immersed methods such stability estimates do not transfer to the discrete level automatically due to the non matching nature of the finite dimensional spaces involved in the discretization after presenting our general mathematical framework for the solution of fsi problems we focus in detail on the construction of natural interpolation operators between the fluid and the solid discrete spaces which guarantee semi discrete stability estimates and strong consistency of our spatial discretization

multigrid methods for the computation of singular solutions and stress intensity factors i corner singularities we consider the poisson equation u f with homogeneous dirichlet boundary condition on a two dimensional polygonal domain with cracks multigrid methods for the computation of singular solutions and stress intensity factors using piecewise linear functions are analyzed the convergence rate for the stress intensity factors is mathcal o h 3 2 in whenfel2 and mathcal o h 2 in whenfeh1 the convergence rate in the energy norm is mathcal o h 1 in in the first case and mathcal o h in the second case the costs of these multigrid methods are proportional to the number of elements in the triangulation the general case wherefehm is also discussed

lumbar spinal muscle activation synergies predicted by multi criteria cost function the hypothesis that control of lumbar spinal muscle synergies is biomechanically optimized was studied by comparing emg data with an analytical model with a multi component cost function that could include 1 trunk displacements 2 intervertebral displacements 3 intervertebral forces 4 sum of cubed muscle stresses and 5 eigenvalues for the first two spinal buckling modes the model s independent variables were 180 muscle forces the 36 displacements of 6 vertebrae were calculated from muscle forces and the spinal stiffness calculated muscle activation was compared with emg data from 14 healthy human subjects who performed isometric voluntary ramped maximum efforts at angles of 0 degrees 45 degrees 90 degrees 135 degrees and 180 degrees to the right from the anterior direction muscle activation at each angle was quantified as the linear regression slope of the rms emg versus external force relationship normalized by the maximum observed emg there was good agreement between the analytical model and emg data for the dorsal muscles when the model included either minimization of intervertebral displacements or minimization of intervertebral forces in its cost function but the model did not predict a realistic level of abdominal muscles activation agreement with emg data was improved with the sum of the cubed muscle stresses added to the cost function addition of a cost function component to maximize the trunk stability produced higher levels of antagonistic muscle activation at low efforts than at greater efforts it was concluded that the muscle activation strategy efficiently limits intervertebral forces and displacements and that costs of higher muscle stresses are taken into account but stability does not appear to be maximized trunk muscles are apparently not controlled solely to optimize any one of the biomechanical costs considered here

an arbitrary lagrangian eulerian finite element formulation for a poroelasticity problem stemming from mixture theory abstract a finite element formulation is developed for a poroelastic medium consisting of an incompressible hyperelastic skeleton saturated by an incompressible fluid the governing equations stem from mixture theory and the application is motivated by the study of interstitial fluid flow in brain tissue the formulation is based on the adoption of an arbitrary lagrangian eulerian ale perspective we focus on a flow regime in which inertia forces are negligible the stability and convergence of the formulation is discussed and numerical results demonstrate agreement with the theory

computation of the stress intensity factors of sharp notched plates by the fractal like finite element method the fractal like finite element method ffem is an accurate and efficient method to compute the stress intensity factors sifs of different crack configurations in the ffem the cracked notched body is divided into singular and regular regions both regions are modelled using conventional finite elements a self similar fractal mesh of an infinite number of conventional finite elements is used to model the singular region the corresponding large number of local variables in the singular region around the crack tip is transformed to a small set of global co ordinates after performing a global transformation by using global interpolation functions in this paper we extend this method to analyse the singularity problems of sharp notched plates the exact stress and displacement fields of a plate with a notch of general angle are derived for plane stress strain conditions these exact analytical solutions which are eigenfunction expansion series are used to perform the global transformation and to determine the sifs the use of the global interpolation functions reduces the computational cost significantly and neither post processing technique to extract sifs nor special singular elements to model the singular region are needed the numerical examples demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the ffem for sharp notched problems copyright 2008 john wiley sons ltd

singular solutions of a transmission problem in plane linear elasticity for wedge shaped regions in plane elasticity when two different wedge shaped elastic materials isotropic homogeneous are bonded together along a common edge and subject to tractions on the boundary the stress field will become infinite at the apex in fact asymptotically the displacementu satisfies u approx sum limits j 1 n r i lambda j sum limits k 0 eta j 1 ln k r phi jk theta asr to 0 where r are the polar coordinates with origin at the wedge apex and the complex numbers j are the roots with positive imaginary part and multiplicity j of an explicitly given transcendental equation g 0 for applications it is desirable to understand how the number of terms that give rise to unbounded stresses in the above expansion depends on the elasticity constants and on the wedge angles setting n q sum limits 0 operatorname im lambda j q eta j the problem is then to studyn 1 as a function of the material constants and wedge angles a rigorous analysis is presented here for the case in which the wedge angles are equal symmetric domains using the fact thatg is an entire function of which depends continuously on the parameters of the problem we develop a continuity method which enables us to evaluate the functions n left frac pi a right and n left frac pi 2a right wherea is the measure of each wedge angle this yields bounds onn 1 as well as some information on the zeros ofg that correspond to higher order singularities

subject specific knee joint geometry improves predictions of medial tibiofemoral contact forces estimating tibiofemoral joint contact forces is important for understanding the initiation and progression of knee osteoarthritis however tibiofemoral contact force predictions are influenced by many factors including muscle forces and anatomical representations of the knee joint this study aimed to investigate the influence of subject specific geometry and knee joint kinematics on the prediction of tibiofemoral contact forces using a calibrated emg driven neuromusculoskeletal model of the knee one participant fitted with an instrumented total knee replacement walked at a self selected speed while medial and lateral tibiofemoral contact forces ground reaction forces whole body kinematics and lower limb muscle activity were simultaneously measured the combination of generic and subject specific knee joint geometry and kinematics resulted in four different opensim models used to estimate muscle tendon lengths and moment arms the subject specific geometric model was created from ct scans and the subject specific knee joint kinematics representing the translation of the tibia relative to the femur was obtained from fluoroscopy the emg driven model was calibrated using one walking trial but with three different cost functions that tracked the knee flexion extension moments with and without constraint over the estimated joint contact forces the calibrated models then predicted the medial and lateral tibiofemoral contact forces for five other different walking trials the use of subject specific models with minimization of the peak tibiofemoral contact forces improved the accuracy of medial contact forces by 47 and lateral contact forces by 7 respectively compared with the use of generic musculoskeletal model

the dpg methodology applied to different variational formulations of linear elasticity abstract the flexibility of the dpg methodology is exposed by solving the linear elasticity equations under different variational formulations including some with non symmetric functional settings different infinite dimensional trial and test spaces the family of formulations presented is proved to be mutually ill or well posed when using traditional energy spaces on the whole domain moreover they are shown to remain well posed when using broken energy spaces and interface variables four variational formulations are solved in 3d using the dpg methodology numerical evidence is given for both smooth and singular solutions and the expected convergence rates are observed

asymptotic description of the logarithmic singular stress field and its application abstract in a joint of two dissimilar materials under mechanical or thermal loading the stresses at the intersection of the edges and the interface are very high or singular for elastic materials behaviour for most joint geometries and material combinations there is a type of r singularity however for some joint geometries and material combinations there is a type of ln r singularity in this paper the type of ln r stress singularity for a two dissimilar materials joint under thermal loading is treated by the mellin transform method emphasis is placed on the asymptotical description of the stress distribution near the singular point the angular functions used to describe the stresses are given in a general form which are different to those of the same joint under edge tractions for a quarter planes joint angular functions are given in an explicit form finally examples are presented to show when the asymptotical solution for the type of ln r stress singularity can be used to describe stresses near the singular point in the practical relevant joints for a finite joint the unknown factor k used to describe the stress is given as well

a locking free hp dpg method for linear elasticity with symmetric stresses we present two new methods for linear elasticity that simultaneously yield stress and displacement approximations of optimal accuracy in both the mesh size h and polynomial degree p this is achieved within the recently developed discontinuous petrov galerkin dpg framework in this framework both the stress and the displacement approximations are discontinuous across element interfaces we study locking free convergence properties and the interrelationships between the two dpg methods

stress singularities in a dissimilar materials joint with edge tractions under mechanical and thermal loadings in a two dissimilar materials joint the stresses at the intersection of the edges and the interface are singular for elastic material behaviour for a joint with edge tractions the stresses near the singular point are the sum of singular terms and regular terms earlier investigations have shown that the singular stress exponents are the same for a joint with free edge and edges with tractions in the literatures only the singular term has been studied the emphasis in this paper is placed on giving an explicit form of the regular stress terms as a function of the edge tractions the material properties and the geometry of the joint it is shown that the regular terms are important also for the stress distribution near the singular point

stabilized finite element method for incompressible flows with high reynolds number in the following paper we discuss the exhaustive use and implementation of stabilization finite element methods for the resolution of the 3d time dependent incompressible navier stokes equations the proposed method starts by the use of a finite element variational multiscale vms method which consists in here of a decomposition for both the velocity and the pressure fields into coarse resolved scales and fine unresolved scales this choice of decomposition is shown to be favorable for simulating flows at high reynolds number we explore the behaviour and accuracy of the proposed approximation on three test cases first the lid driven square cavity at reynolds number up to 50 000 is compared with the highly resolved numerical simulations and second the lid driven cubic cavity up to re 12 000 is compared with the experimental data finally we study the flow over a 2d backward facing step at re 42 000 results show that the present implementation is able to exhibit good stability and accuracy properties for high reynolds number flows with unstructured meshes

numerical analysis of singularities in two dimensions part 1 computation of eigenpairs a numerical method is described for the computation of eigenpairs which characterize the exact solution of linear second order elliptic partial differential equations in two dimensions in the vicinity of singular points the singularities may be caused by re entrant corners and abrupt changes in boundary conditions or material properties such singularities are of great interest from the point of view of failure initiation the eigenpairs characterize the straining modes and their amplitudes quantify the amount of energy residing in particular straining modes for this reason failure theories directly or indirectly involve the eigenpairs and their amplitudes this paper addresses the problem of determining the eigenpairs numerically on the basis of the steklov formulation numerical results are presented for several cases importantly the method is applicable to three dimensional cases

fracture analysis of v notched components effects of first non singular stress term the effect of the first non singular stress term on the fracture behavior of notched structures was investigated under symmetric geometry and loading conditions according to the williams series expansion for a large domain of notch angles the non singular stress terms of sharp notches are functions of complex eigenvalues and their corresponding complex coefficients hence a new representation of stress field near the notch tip was developed in which the higher order terms are expressed as several explicit functions of real and imaginary parts of both the complex eigenvalues and their complex coefficients a critical stress criterion was then applied to the new stress formulations to assess the influence of the first non singular stress term on the apparent fracture toughness several finite element analyses were also performed on two laboratory specimens in order to show the effects of first non singular term on the near field stress distribution of notched specimens the results demonstrated that neglecting the first non singular stress term could lead to significant errors in predicting the apparent fracture toughness of notched components

layer potentials for elastostatics and hydrostatics in curvilinear polygonal domains the symbolic calculus of pseudodifferential operators of mellin type is applied to study layer potentials on a plane domain q whose boundary 9q is a curvilinear polygon a singularity type is a zero of the determinant of the matrix of symbols of the mellin operators and can be used to calculate the bad values of p for which the system is not fredholm on lp 9q using the method of layer potentials we study the singularity types of the system of elastostatics lu uau au vdivu 0 in a plane domain q whose boundary 9k2 is a curvilinear polygon here u 0 and u a oo when a oo the system is the stokes system of hydrostatics for the traction double layer potential we show that all singularity types in the strip 0 re z i lie in the interval 1 1 so that the system of integral equations is a fredholm operator of index 0 on lp aq for all p 2 p oo the explicit dependence of the singularity types on a and the interior angles 0 of aq is calculated the singularity type of each corner is independent of a if the corner is nonconvex introduction recently there has been considerable interest in using layer potentials to solve lp boundary value problems for elliptic operators and systems on a lipschitz domain q in r for the systems of elastostatics dkv and hydrostatics fkv dahlberg fabes kenig and verchota have used rellich type identities to prove that the double layer potential integral equations yield a fredholm operator of index 0 on l 2 q for p 2 only limited information is available on the boundary integral equations for general lipschitz domains in rn the general problem of the notion of symbol on the boundary of a general lipschitz domain is still very much open in this paper we treat a very special case a curvilinear polygonal domain in r in this 2 dimensional case a precise symbolic calculus of pseudodifferential operators of mellin type is available we show that certain double layer boundary integral equations yield operators which for all p 2 p 00 are received by the editors december 14 1988 1980 mathematics subject classification 1985 revision primary 35j25 45e05 research partially supported by the italian cnr 1990 american mathematical society 0002 9947 90 1 00 25 per page

a statistical human rib cage geometry model accounting for variations by age sex stature and body mass index in this study we developed a statistical rib cage geometry model accounting for variations by age sex stature and body mass index bmi thorax ct scans were obtained from 89 subjects approximately evenly distributed among 8 age groups and both sexes threshold based ct image segmentation was performed to extract the rib geometries and a total of 464 landmarks on the left side of each subject s ribcage were collected to describe the size and shape of the rib cage as well as the cross sectional geometry of each rib principal component analysis and multivariate regression analysis were conducted to predict rib cage geometry as a function of age sex stature and bmi all of which showed strong effects on rib cage geometry except for bmi all parameters also showed significant effects on rib cross sectional area using a linear mixed model this statistical rib cage geometry model can serve as a geometric basis for developing a parametric human thorax finite element model for quantifying effects from different human attributes on thoracic injury risks

subject specific regression equations to estimate lower spinal loads during symmetric and asymmetric static lifting abstract workplace safety assessment personalized treatment design and back pain prevention programs require accurate subject specific estimation of spinal loads since no noninvasive method can directly estimate spinal loads easy to use regression equations that are constructed based on the results of complex musculoskeletal models appear as viable alternatives thus we aim to develop subject specific regression equations of l4 l5 and l5 s1 shear and compression forces during various symmetric asymmetric tasks using a nonlinear personalized finite element musculoskeletal trunk model kinematics and electromyography emg activities of 19 young healthy subjects were collected during 64 different symmetric asymmetric tasks to investigate the reliability and accuracy of the musculoskeletal model and regression equations we compared estimated trunk muscle activities and l4 l5 intradiscal pressures idps respectively with our own electromyography data emgs and reported in vivo pressure measurements although in general six independent rotation components three trunk t11 rotations and three pelvic s1 rotations are required to determine kinematics along the spine only two surrogate variables trunk flexion and its asymmetric angles satisfactorily predicted all six rotation components r2 0 94 regression equations developed based on subject specific inputs predicted spinal loads in satisfactory agreement with idp measurements r2 0 85 predicted muscle activities in the personalized musculoskeletal models were in moderate to weak agreements with our measured emgs in 19 participants based on dominance analysis trunk flexion and its asymmetry angle hand load weight hand load lever arm and body weight were the most important variables while the effects of body height and sex on spinal loads remained small

efficient boundary element analysis of sharp notched plates the present paper further develops the boundary element singularity subtraction technique to provide an efficient and accurate method of analysing the general mixed mode deformation of two dimensional linear elastic structures containing sharp notches the elastic field around sharp notches is singular because of the convergence difficulties that arise in numerical modelling of elastostatic problems with singular fields these singularities are subtracted out of the original elastic field using the first term of the williams series expansion this regularization procedure introduces the stress intensity factors as additional unknowns in the problem hence extra conditions are required to obtain a solution extra conditions are defined such that the local solution in the neighbourhood of the notch tip is identical to the williams solution the procedure can take into account any number of terms of the series expansion the standard boundary element method is modified to handle additional unknowns and extra boundary conditions analysis of plates with symmetry boundary conditions is shown to be straightforward with the modified boundary element method in the case of non symmetrical plates the singular tip tractions are not primary boundary element unknowns the boundary element method must be further modified to introduce the boundary integral stress equations of an internal point approaching the notch tip as primary unknowns in the formulation the accuracy and efficiency of the method is demonstrated with some benchmark tests of mixed mode problems new results are presented for the mixed mode analysis of a non symmetrical configuration of a single edge notched plate

the post processing approach in the finite element method part 2 the calculation of stress intensity factors abstract in the context of a model problem the authors describe post processing techniques for the calculation of generalized stress intensity factors they discuss two broad classes of methods one involving an influence function and the other related to the well known energy release principle of fracture mechanics an error analysis is sketched and two numerical examples are given to illustrate the effectivity of the techniques this is the second in a series of three papers author

a numerical procedure for the determination of certain quantities related to the stress intensity factors in two dimensional elasticity abstract this work is devoted to the investigation of corner and interface singularities in linear elasticity and to the development of a numerical code that computes certain quantities associated with those singularities we compute several terms of the asymptotic expansion of the solution of the elasticity system near the corner or interface which is of the form knr nfn in particular the n and fn we treat our problem as a non linear eigenvalue problem and we use an approach based on the shooting method for boundary value problems to create an analytic function whose zeros are the n above the zeros of this function are then found using an iteration method and a global method to make sure that no zero was overlooked the program works for the general case of anisotropic non homogeneous wedge with general boundary conditions as well as in the case of crossing interfaces in an internal point we test the convergence accuracy robustness efficiency and reliability of the code from those tests it can be seen that the code works quite well for the majority of the applications

on the determination of higher order terms of singular elastic stress fields near corners in two dimensional elasticity stresses at reentrant corners exhibit singular behavior the stress field is of the form sigma sigma rm k iota r lambda 2 1 f i theta lambda i where r are polar coordinates centered at the tip of the corner andf i i are smooth functions for practical use of this series the eigenvalues i which are generally complex numbers are required in order of ascending real part the problem then is to find the roots of a transcendental equation eigenequation in the complex plane and arranged in order of ascending real part a theorem is proved on the number location and nature of the roots of this equation with the real part in fixed intervals of length excellent initial estimates of the real part of the complex roots become available and so are bounds within which single real roots exist this enables the determination of any number of roots in ascending order of real part the critical angles at which the eigenvalues change nature are also determined it is shown that for certain cases and for the symmetric mode of deformation the eigenvalue 1 does not represent a rigid body rotation therefore it has to be included in the series representation of the stresses the coefficientsk i can be determined by recently developed extraction techniques thus allowing complete determination of the elastic field and enabling its correlation with experimental data on brittle fracture crack initiation plastic zone estimation etc

crack tip interpolation revisited it is well known that the near tip displacement eld on a crack surface can be represented in a power series in the variable p r where r is the distance to the tip it is shown herein that the coecients of the linear terms on the two sides of the crack are equal equivalently the linear term in the crack opening displacement vanishes the proof is a completely general argument valid for an arbitrary e g multiple nonplanar crack conguration and applied boundary conditions moreover the argument holds for other equations such as laplace a limit procedure for calculating the surface stress in the form of a hypersingular boundary integral equation is employed to enforce the boundary conditions along the crack faces evaluation of the nite surface stress and examination of potentially singular terms lead to the result inclusion of this constraint in numerical calculations should result in a more accurate approximation of the displacement and stress elds in the tip region and thus a more accurate evaluation of stress intensity factors

formulation and finite element implementation of a multiplicative model of coupled poro plasticity at finite strains under fully saturated conditions in this paper we present the formulation and numerical analysis of a finite deformation model of coupled poro plasticity fully saturated conditions are assumed the model is based on a multiplicative decomposition of the deformation gradient in elastic and plastic parts together with an additive elastoplastic decomposition of the fluid content the final relations describing the evolution of the different fields are then obtained in the thermodynamic framework furnished by the principle of maximum plastic dissipation the particular case of an associated drucker prager model in effective stresses is considered as a model example a complete characterization of the dissipative structure of the problem of evolution is described through the derivation of an a priori stability estimate we describe in detail the finite element implementation of the model in the context of staggered algorithms for the solution of the physically coupled problem finally we present representative numerical simulations to illustrate the features of the proposed models in particular the case of strain localization in globally undrained conditions is studied in the proposed framework