a nitsche stabilized finite element method for frictional sliding on embedded interfaces part ii intersecting interfaces abstract we extend the weighted nitsche s method proposed in the first part of this study to include multiple intersecting embedded interfaces these intersections arise either inside a computational domain where two internal interfaces intersect or on the boundary of the computational domain where an internal interface intersects with the external boundary we propose a variational treatment of both the interfacial kinematics and the external dirichlet constraints within nitsche s framework we modify the numerical analysis to account for these intersections and provide an explicit expression for the weights and the method parameters that arise in the nitsche variational form in the presence of junctions finally we demonstrate the performance of the method for both perfectly tied interfaces and perfectly plastic sliding interfaces through several benchmark examples

three dimensional non planar crack growth by a coupled extended finite element and fast marching method a numerical technique for non planar three dimensional linear elastic crack growth simulations is proposed this technique couples the extended finite element method x fem and the fast marching method fmm in crack modeling using x fem the framework of partition of unity is used to enrich the standard finite element approximation by a discontinuous function and the two dimensional asymptotic crack tip displacement fields the initial crack geometry is represented by two level set functions and subsequently signed distance functions are used to maintain the location of the crack and to compute the enrichment functions that appear in the displacement approximation crack modeling is performed without the need to mesh the crack and crack propagation is simulated without remeshing crack growth is conducted using fmm unlike a level set formulation for interface capturing no iterations nor any time step restrictions are imposed in the fmm planar and non planar quasi static crack growth simulations are presented to demonstrate the robustness and versatility of the proposed technique copyright 2008 john wiley sons ltd

analysis of three dimensional fracture mechanics problems a two scale approach using coarse generalized fem meshes this paper presents a generalized finite element method gfem based on the solution of interdependent global structural and local crack scale problems the local problems focus on the resolution of fine scale features of the solution in the vicinity of three dimensional cracks while the global problem addresses the macro scale structural behavior the local solutions are embedded into the solution space for the global problem using the partition of unity method the local problems are accurately solved using an hp gfem and thus the proposed method does not rely on analytical solutions the proposed methodology enables accurate modeling of three dimensional cracks on meshes with elements that are orders of magnitude larger than the process zone along crack fronts the boundary conditions for the local problems are provided by the coarse global mesh solution and can be of dirichlet neumann or cauchy type the effect of the type of local boundary conditions on the performance of the proposed gfem is analyzed several three dimensional fracture mechanics problems aimed at investigating the accuracy of the method and its computational performance both in terms of problem size and cpu time are presented copyright 2009 john wiley sons ltd

imposing dirichlet boundary conditions in the extended finite element method this paper is devoted to the imposition of dirichlet type conditions within the extended finite element method x fem this method allows one to easily model surfaces of discontinuity or domain boundaries on a mesh not necessarily conforming to these surfaces imposing neumann boundary conditions on boundaries running through the elements is straightforward and does preserve the optimal rate of convergence of the background mesh observed numerically in earlier papers on the contrary much less work has been devoted to dirichlet boundary conditions for the x fem or the limiting case of stiff boundary conditions in this paper we introduce a strategy to impose dirichlet boundary conditions while preserving the optimal rate of convergence the key aspect is the construction of the correct lagrange multiplier space on the boundary as an application we suggest to use this new approach to impose precisely zero pressure on the moving resin front in resin transfer moulding rtm process while avoiding remeshing the case of inner conditions is also discussed as well as two important practical cases material interfaces and phase transformation front capturing copyright 2006 john wiley sons ltd

a new cloud based hp finite element method a hybrid computational method for solving boundary value problems is introduced which combines features of the meshless hp cloud methods with features of conventional finite elements the method admits straightforward nonuniform hp type approximations easy implementation of essential boundary conditions is robust under severe distortions of the mesh and can deliver exponential rates of convergence results of numerical experiments are presented

stable gfem sgfem improved conditioning and accuracy of gfem xfem for three dimensional fracture mechanics abstract in this paper we present an extension of the stable generalized fem sgfem for 3 d fracture mechanics problems numerical experiments show that the use of available singular enrichment bases derived from the 2 d asymptotic crack tip solution leads to a severe loss of accuracy in the sgfem an enrichment scheme based on singular bases and linear polynomials is shown to recover the optimal convergence of the sgfem the proposed sgfem for 3 d fractures delivers the same rate of growth in condition number as the standard fem for proper choice of singular enrichment functions the accuracy and conditioning obtained with the sgfem is compared with the generalized fem gfem for different types of singular enrichment bases a fully 3 d fracture mechanics problem is considered to highlight issues that arise only in 3 d problems the convergence of stress intensity factors sifs extracted from gfem and sgfem solutions and the effect of the size of enrichment sub domains on the accuracy of extracted sifs are also studied it is shown that the accuracy of sifs may deteriorate with mesh refinement when the topological enrichment strategy is adopted the proposed sgfem delivers much better accuracy than the gfem for both geometrical and topological enrichment strategies

the generalized finite element method for helmholtz equation theory computation and open problems in this paper we address the generalized finite element method for the helmholtz equation we obtain our method by employing the finite element method on cartesian meshes which may overlap the boundaries of the problem domain and by enriching the approximation by plane waves pasted into the finite element basis at each mesh vertex by the partition of unity method here we address the q convergence of the method where q is the number of plane waves added at each vertex for the class of smooth analytic solutions for which we get better than exponential convergence for sufficiently small h depending on p an important observation is that we can monitor the accuracy in any computed solution quantity of interest at negligible cost by using q extrapolation our results assume exact integration of all the employed integrals further studies are needed to analyze the effects of the numerical integrations and also the effect of the roundoff errors

spectral decompositions of isometries oncp the spatial action of the stone type spectral family for a certain type of strongly continuous one parameter groups of surjective isometries as well as of the spectral decomposition of their single elements oncp 1 p is examined the umd structure for 1 p and triangular truncations and duality forp 1 are involved in various cases concrete descriptions of the associated riesz nagy operators and arveson s spectral subspaces are derived as byproducts of independent interest

extra dof free and linearly independent enrichments in gfem abstract a gfem without extra dof is developed without the extra dof the resulting linear system becomes independent in size of the order of local approximation the resulting pu approximation becomes free of linear dependence and the resulting stiffness matrix becomes good conditioned numerical studies show the new gfem s excellent convergence properties and excellent stability

hp generalized fem and crack surface representation for non planar 3 d cracks a high order generalized finite element method gfem for non planar three dimensional crack surfaces is presented discontinuous p hierarchical enrichment functions are applied to strongly graded tetrahedral meshes automatically created around crack fronts the gfem is able to model a crack arbitrarily located within a finite element fe mesh and thus the proposed method allows fully automated fracture analysis using an existing fe discretization without cracks we also propose a crack surface representation that is independent of the underlying gfem discretization and controlled only by the physics of the problem the representation preserves continuity of the crack surface while being able to represent non planar non smooth crack surfaces inside of elements of any size the proposed representation also provides support for the implementation of accurate robust and computationally efficient numerical integration of the weak form over elements cut by the crack surface numerical simulations using the proposed gfem show high convergence rates of extracted stress intensity factors along non planar curved crack fronts and the robustness of the method copyright 2008 john wiley sons ltd

a high order finite element technique with automatic treatment of stress singularities by semi analytical enrichment abstract this paper presents an approach to the automatic enrichment of finite elements in the vicinity of a stress singularity the enrichment consists of semi analytical singular modes constructed using the scaled boundary finite element method sbfem in contrast to analytical methods the sbfem provides modes for inhomogeneous and anisotropic materials without additional effort the finite element basis can be of arbitrary order and remains unaltered by the enrichment the approach requires enrichment in only one layer of elements around a node due to the compatibility of sbfem with fem there is no need for transitional elements and there are no parasitic terms the approach is tested for several benchmark problems the stress intensity factors are computed based on techniques inspired by the sbfem the proposed procedure is compared to a standard finite element implementation and shows a significant improvement in the error of the displacement field for problems involving singular stresses

numerical integration for nonlinear problems of the finite cell method using an adaptive scheme based on moment fitting abstract fictitious domain methods such as the finite cell method simplify the discretization process significantly as the mesh is decoupled from the geometrical description however this simplification in the mesh generation results in broken cells which is why special integration methods are required usually adaptive integration schemes are applied resulting in a large number of integration points and thus an expensive numerical integration especially for nonlinear applications to perform the numerical integration more efficiently we propose an adaptive integration method using moment fitting thereby we present a moment fitting approach based on lagrange polynomials through gauss legendre points to circumvent having to solve the moment fitting equation system the performance of this integration method is shown by studying several numerical examples of the finite cell method for small and large strain problems in elastoplasticity

prophlex an hp adaptive finite element kernel for solving coupled systems of partial differential equations in computational mechanics this paper presents an overview of the basic design and architecture of the prophlex hp adaptive finite element kernel prophlex was designed to be a commercial robust implementation of hp adaptivity driven by residual error estimation with the primary goal of being physics independent and computationally efficient on a wide array of computer hardware platforms prophlex can solve virtually any class of engineering problems which be may be mathematically formulated as a system of linear or nonlinear second order partial differential equations and associated boundary conditions it has been applied to compressible and incompressible fluid dynamics linear and nonlinear solid mechanics heat flow problems as well as semiconductor device simulation examples of prophlex customization for linear and nonlinear solid mechanics are presented

an efficient augmented finite element method for arbitrary cracking and crack interaction in solids summary this paper presents an augmentation method that enables bilinear finite elements to efficiently and accurately account for arbitrary multiple intra elemental discontinuities in 2d solids the augmented finite element method a fem employs four internal nodes to account for the crack displacements due to an intra elemental weak or strong discontinuity and it permits repeated elemental augmentation to include multiple interactive cracks it thus enables a unified treatment of damage evolution from a weak discontinuity to a strong discontinuity and to multiple interactive cohesive cracks all within a single bilinear element that employs standard external nodal dofs only a novel elemental condensation procedure has been developed to solve the internal nodal dofs as functions of the external nodal dofs for any irreversible piece wise linear cohesive laws it leads to a fully condensed elemental equilibrium equation with mathematical exactness eliminating the need for nonlinear equilibrium iterations at elemental level the new a fem s high fidelity simulation capabilities to interactive cohesive crack formation and propagation in homogeneous and heterogeneous solids have been demonstrated through several challenging numerical examples it is shown that the proposed a fem empowered by the new elemental condensation procedure is numerically very efficient accurate and robust copyright 2014 john wiley sons ltd

arbitrarily smooth generalized finite element approximations this paper presents a procedure to build ck k arbitrarily large generalized finite element fe shape functions defined on non structured finite element meshes the functions have the same support as corresponding global fe lagrangian shape functions meshes with both convex and non convex clouds set of elements sharing a vertex node can be used the so called r functions are used to build ck fe based partition of unity functions with non convex support a technique to combine c0 lagrangian fe shape functions with the proposed ck partition of unity is presented the technique allows the use of ck generalized fe shape functions in parts of the computational domain where their high smoothness is required as in the case of problems with distributional boundary conditions and the less computationally demanding c0 generalized fe shape functions elsewhere in the domain a linear elasticity problem with a concentrated moment is solved using the proposed ck generalized fe method higher order distributional boundary conditions can also be handled by the method a detailed convergence analysis is presented for this class of problems as well as for problems in energy space the integrability of the functions using standard gauss legendre rules is also investigated

blending in the extended finite element method by discontinuous galerkin and assumed strain methods summary in the extended finite element method xfem errors are caused by parasitic terms in the approximation space of the blending elements at the edge of the enriched subdomain a discontinuous galerkin dg formulation is developed which circumvents this source of error a patch based version of the dg formulation is developed which decomposes the domain into enriched and unenriched subdomains continuity between patches is enforced with an internal penalty method an element based form is also developed where each element is considered a patch the patch based dg is shown to have similar accuracy to the element based dg for a given discretization but requires significantly fewer degrees of freedom the method is applied to material interfaces cracks and dislocation problems for the dislocations a contour integral form of the internal forces that only requires integration over the patch boundaries is developed a previously developed assumed strain as method is also developed further and compared with the dg method for weak discontinuities and linear elastic cracks the dg method is shown to be significantly more accurate than the standard xfem for a given element size and to converge optimally even where the standard xfem does not the accuracy of the dg method is similar to that of the as method but requires less application specific coding copyright q 2007 john wiley sons ltd

a stable generalized finite element method sgfem of degree two for interface problems abstract generalized or extended finite element methods gfem xfem of degree 1 for interface problems have been reported in the literature they i yield optimal order of convergence i e o h h is a discretization parameter ii are stable in a sense that conditioning is not worse than that of the standard fem and iii are robust in that the conditioning does not deteriorate as interface curves are close to boundaries of underlying elements however higher order gfem xfem with the properties i iii have not been successfully addressed yet various enrichment schemes for gfem xfem based on d or d p k d is a distance function or the absolute value of level set function and p k is the polynomial basis of degree k have been reported recently to obtain higher order convergence but they are not stable or robust in general in fact they even may not yield the optimal orders of convergence in this paper we propose a stable gfem xfem of degree 2 sgfem2 for the interface problems where we used the enrichment scheme based on d 1 x y instead of d or d 1 x y x 2 x y y 2 in the literature we prove that the sgfem2 yields the optimal order of convergence i e o h 2 for the interface problems with curved smooth interfaces a local principal component analysis technique has been proposed which ensures that the sgfem2 is stable and robust numerical experiments for straight and curved interfaces have been presented to illuminate these properties

high order x fem and levelsets for complex microstructures uncoupling geometry and approximation in this contribution a strategy is proposed for uncoupling geometrical description and approximation with the x fem the strategy is based on an uniform coarse mesh that defines a high order approximation of the mechanical fields and an adapted mesh that defines the geometrical features by means of levelsets the connection between the geometry and the approximation is obtained by sharing the quadtree trees of the two meshes numerical examples involving level set based parts convergence studies mechanical computations and numerical homogenization show good promise for this approach

a multiscale extended finite element method for crack propagation in this paper we propose a multiscale strategy for crack propagation which enables one to use a refined mesh only in the crack s vicinity where it is required two techniques are used in synergy a multiscale strategy based on a domain decomposition method to account for the crack s global and local effects efficiently and a local enrichment technique the x fem to describe the geometry of the crack independently of the mesh the focus of this study is the avoidance of meshing difficulties and the choice of an appropriate scale separation to make the strategy efficient we show that the introduction of the crack s discontinuity both on the microscale and on the macroscale is essential for the numerical scalability of the domain decomposition method to remain unaffected by the presence of a crack thus the convergence rate of the iterative solver is the same throughout the crack s propagation

surfaces generated by moving least squares methods an analysis of moving least squares m l s methods for smoothing and interpolating scattered data is presented in particular theorems are proved concerning the smoothness of interpolants and the description of m l s processes as projection methods some properties of compositions of the m l s projector with projectors associated with finiteelement schemes are also considered the analysis is accompanied by examples of univariate and bivariate problems

stable imposition of stiff constraints in explicit dynamics for embedded finite element methods summary we investigate various strategies to enforce the kinematics at an embedded interface for transient problems within the extended finite element method in particular we focus on explicit time integration of the semi discrete equations of motion and extend both dual and primal variational frameworks for constraint enforcement to a transient regime we reiterate the incompatibility of the dual formulation with purely explicit time integration and the severe restrictions placed by the courant friedrichs levy condition on primal formulations we propose an alternate consistent formulation for the primal method and derive an estimate for the stabilization parameter which is more amenable in an explicit dynamics framework importantly the use of the new estimate circumvents the need for any tolerances as an interface approaches an element boundary we also show that with interfacial constraints existing mass lumping schemes can lead to prohibitively small critical time steps accordingly we propose a mass lumping procedure which provides a more favorable estimate these techniques are then demonstrated on several benchmark numerical examples where we compare and contrast the accuracy of the primal methods against the dual methods in enforcing the constraints copyright 2012 john wiley sons ltd

square root receding horizon information filters for nonlinear dynamic system models new nonlinear filtering algorithms are designed based on a receding horizon strategy i e a finite impulse response fir structure and square root information filtering to achieve high accuracy and good performance in empirical error covariance tests the new nonlinear receding horizon filters reduce approximation errors in nonlinear filtering by considering a set of recent observations with non informative initial conditions by applying information filtering we are able to manage the non informative initial conditions and thus propose the square root version of the algorithm as a means of retaining the positive definiteness of the error covariance based on the proposed strategy we then implement known nonlinear filtering frameworks simulation results confirm that the new nonlinear receding horizon filters outperform existing nonlinear filters in well known nonlinear examples

multi physics design of microvascular materials for active cooling applications this paper describes a framework for the design of microvascular polymeric components for active cooling applications the design of the embedded networks involves complex and competing objectives that are associated with various physical processes the optimization tool includes a pde solver based on advanced finite element techniques coupled to a multi objective constrained genetic algorithm the resulting pareto optimal fronts are investigated in the optimization of these materials for void volume fraction flow efficiency maximum temperature and surface convection objective functions

a corrected xfem approximation without problems in blending elements the extended finite element method xfem enables local enrichments of approximation spaces standard finite elements are used in the major part of the domain and enriched elements are employed where special solution properties such as discontinuities and singularities shall be captured in elements that blend the enriched areas with the rest of the domain problems arise in general these blending elements often require a special treatment in order to avoid a decrease in the overall convergence rate a modification of the xfem approximation is proposed in this work the enrichment functions are modified such that they are zero in the standard elements unchanged in the elements with all their nodes being enriched and varying continuously in the blending elements all nodes in the blending elements are enriched the modified enrichment function can be reproduced exactly everywhere in the domain and no problems arise in the blending elements the corrected xfem is applied to problems in linear elasticity and optimal convergence rates are achieved copyright 2007 john wiley sons ltd

robustness of isogeometric structural discretizations under severe mesh distortion abstract this paper investigates higher order and higher continuity functions in isogeometric structural analysis under distortion of the control and physical meshes first the concepts behind isogeometric analysis are briefly reviewed the effect of perturbing control points upon the geometrical mapping is observed in the one dimensional setting the concept is extended to multiple dimensions with a series of cases where the interior of a cube is distorted in different ways and patch tests are performed to assess accuracy a circular fillet patch is introduced through the appropriate degeneration of a control mesh in order to address the problem of modeling small features in finite element models the fillet patch is tested with two problems of linear elasticity and is shown to be accurate the investigation is further extended to the setting of large deformation nearly incompressible nonlinear elasticity with two examples which make use of the recently proposed f projection method

a partition of unity finite element method for obtaining elastic properties of continua with embedded thin fibres the numerical analysis of large numbers of arbitrarily distributed discrete thin fibres embedded in a continuum is a computationally demanding process in this contribution we propose an approach based on the partition of unity property of finite element shape functions that can handle discrete thin fibres in a continuum matrix without meshing them this is made possible by a special enrichment function that represents the action of each individual fibre on the matrix our approach allows to model fibre reinforced materials considering matrix fibres and interfaces between matrix and fibres individually each with its own elastic constitutive law copyright 2010 john wiley sons ltd

design of microvascular flow networks using multi objective genetic algorithms a multi objective genetic algorithm is used to design 2d and 3d microvascular networks embedded in bio mimetic self healing self cooling polymeric materials various objective functions and constraints are considered ranging from flow efficiency and homogeneity to network redundancy and void volume fraction the design variables include the network topology defined over a template and the microchannel diameters chosen among a finite set of values the effect of network redundancy template geometry and microchannel diameters on the pareto optimal fronts generated by the genetic algorithm is investigated

a computational approach to handle complex microstructure geometries in multiscale analysis of components there is usually a need to solve microstructures with complex geometries in this paper we use the extended finite element method x fem to solve scales involving complex geometries the x fem allows one to use meshes not necessarily matching the physical surface of the problem while retaining the accuracy of the classical finite element approach for material interfaces this is achieved by introducing a new enrichment strategy although the mesh does not need to conform to the physical surfaces it needs to be fine enough to capture the geometry of these surfaces a simple algorithm is described to adaptively refine the mesh to meet this geometrical requirement numerical experiments on the periodic homogenization of two phase complex cells demonstrate the accuracy and simplicity of the x fem c 2003 elsevier b v all rights reserved

fast integration and weight function blending in the extended finite element method two issues in the extended finite element method xfem are addressed efficient numerical integration of the weak form when the enrichment function is self equilibrating and blending of the enrichment the integration is based on transforming the domain integrals in the weak form into equivalent contour integrals it is shown that the contour form is computationally more efficient than the domain form especially when the enrichment function is singular and or discontinuous a method for alleviating the errors in the blending elements is also studied in this method the enrichment function is pre multiplied by a smooth weight function with compact support to allow for a completely smooth transition between enriched and unenriched subdomains a method for blending step function enrichment with singular enrichments is described it is also shown that if the enrichment is not shifted properly the weighted enrichment is equivalent to the standard enrichment an edge dislocation and a crack problem are used to benchmark the technique the influence of the variables that parameterize the weight function is analyzed the resulting method shows both improved accuracy and optimum convergence rates and is easily implemented into existing xfem codes

an iterative kalman like algorithm ignoring noise and initial conditions we address a p shift finite impulse response fir unbiased estimator ue for linear discrete time varying filtering p 0 p step prediction p 0 and p lag smoothing p 0 in state space with no requirements for initial conditions and zero mean noise a solution is found in a batch form and represented in a computationally efficient iterative kalman like one it is shown that the kalman like fir ue is able to outperform the kalman filter if the noise covariances and initial conditions are not known exactly noise is not white and both the system and measurement noise components need to be filtered out otherwise the errors are similar extensive numerical studies of the fir ue are provided in gaussian and non gaussian environments with outliers and temporary uncertainties

a generalized finite element method for polycrystals with discontinuous grain boundaries summary we present a generalized finite element method for the analysis of polycrystals with explicit treatment of grain boundaries grain boundaries and junctions understood as loci of possible displacement discontinuity are inserted into finite elements by exploiting the partition of unity property of finite element shape functions consequently the finite element mesh does not need to conform to the polycrystal topology the formulation is outlined and a numerical example is presented to demonstrate the potential and accuracy of the approach the proposed methodology can also be used for branched and intersecting cohesive cracks and comparisons are made to a related approach int j numer meth engng 2000 48 1741 copyright 2006 john wiley sons ltd

robustness in stable generalized finite element methods sgfem applied to poisson problems with crack singularities abstract in this paper we study the performance of the generalized finite element method gfem applied to the poisson problem with crack singularities recently a gfem with modified heaviside enrichments was proposed in gupta et al 2013 to approximate the solution of a 2d elasticity problem with a crack it was shown that the gfem is indeed a stable gfem sgfem i e it yields the optimal order of convergence and its conditioning is not worse than that of the standard finite element method fem however the robustness of the conditioning of the gfem with respect to the position of the mesh relative to the crack was not addressed in gupta et al 2013 in this paper we observed that the conditioning of the gfem with the enrichments used in gupta et al 2013 is not robust when applied to approximate the solution of the poisson problem moreover the order of convergence may not be optimal when the position of the mesh is changed with respect to the crack interfaces we proposed using additional singular enrichments at the nodes close to the crack near the crack tip we proved that the gfem with enrichments proposed in this paper yields optimal order of convergence irrespective of the position of the mesh moreover with a local orthogonalization procedure we have shown through numerical experiments that the conditioning of this gfem is not worse than that of the standard fem and the conditioning is robust with respect to the position of the mesh thus the gfem with the enrichments suggested in this paper is indeed an sgfem when applied to a poisson problem with the crack singularities

special finite element methods for a class of second order elliptic problems with rough coefficients in this paper the approximate solution of a class of second order elliptic equations with rough coefficients is considered problems of the type considered arise in the analysis of unidirectional composites where the coefficients represent the properties of the material several methods for this class of problems are presented and it is shown that they have the same accuracy as usual methods have for problems with smooth coefficients the methods are referred to as special finite element methods because they are of finite element type but employ special shape functions chosen to accurately model the unknown solution

bridging multiple structural scales with a generalized finite element method summary this paper presents a generalized fem based on the solution of interdependent coarse scale global and fine scale local problems in order to resolve multiscale effects due to fine scale heterogeneities overall structural behavior is captured by the global problem while local problems focus on the resolution of fine scale solution features in regions where material heterogeneities may govern the structural response fine scale problems are accurately solved in parallel and to address the intrinsic coupling of scales these solutions are embedded into the global solution space using a partition of unity approach this method is demonstrated on representative heat transfer examples in order to examine its accuracy efficiency and flexibility copyright 2014 john wiley sons ltd

an unfitted hp adaptive finite element method based on hierarchical b splines for interface problems of complex geometry generating finite element discretizations with direct interface parameterizations constitutes a considerable computational expense in case of complex interface geometries the paper at hand introduces a b spline finite element method which circumvents parameterization of interfaces and offers fast and easy meshing irrespective of the geometric complexity involved its core idea is the adaptive approximation of discontinuities by hierarchical grid refinement which adds several levels of local basis functions in the close vicinity of interfaces but unfitted to their exact location so that a simple regular grid of knot span elements can be maintained numerical experiments show that an hp refinement strategy which simultaneously increases the polynomial degree of the b spline basis and the levels of refinement around interfaces achieves exponential rates of convergence despite the presence of discontinuities it is also demonstrated that the hierarchical b spline fem can be used to transfer the recently introduced finite cell concept to geometrically nonlinear problems its computational performance imposition of unfitted boundary conditions and fast hierarchical grid generation are illustrated for a set of benchmark problems in one two and three dimensions and the advantages of the regular grid approach for complex geometries are demonstrated by the geometrically nonlinear simulation of a voxel based foam composite

modeling holes and inclusions by level sets in the extended finite element method a methodology to model arbitrary holes and material interfaces inclusions without meshing the internal boundaries is proposed the numerical method couples the level set method s osher j a sethian j comput phys 79 1 1988 12 to the extended finite element method x fem n moes j dolbow t belytschko int j numer methods engrg 46 1 1999 131 in the x fem the finite element approximation is enriched by additional functions through the notion of partition of unity the level set method is used for representing the location of holes and material interfaces and in addition the level set function is used to develop the local enrichment for material interfaces numerical examples in two dimensional linear elastostatics are presented to demonstrate the accuracy and potential of the new technique

a recovery type error estimator for the extended finite element method based on singular smooth stress field splitting a new stress recovery procedure that provides accurate estimations of the discretization error for linear elastic fracture mechanic problems analyzed with the extended finite element method xfem is presented the procedure is an adaptation of the superconvergent patch recovery spr technique for the xfem framework it is based on three fundamental aspects a the use of a singular smooth stress field decomposition technique involving the use of different recovery methods for each field standard spr for the smooth field and reconstruction of the recovered singular field using the stress intensity factor k for the singular field b direct calculation of smoothed stresses at integration points using conjoint polynomial enhancement and c assembly of patches with elements intersected by the crack using different stress interpolation polynomials at each side of the crack the method was validated by testing it on problems with an exact solution in mode i mode ii and mixed mode and on a problem without analytical solution the results obtained showed the accuracy of the proposed error estimator copyright 2008 john wiley sons ltd

spectral decompositions of one parameter groups of isometries on hardy spaces spectral decompositions of strongly continuous one parameter groups of surjective isometries on hardy spaces of the disk d and the torus t2 are examined a concrete descriptiofi of the pointwise action of these decompositions is presented mainly in the parabolic case leading to a complete description of the action of the partial sum operators of m riesz when carried from lp r to hp d 1 p 2 the pointwise action of the spectral decompositions of these isometric groups on hp t2 1 p oo is also examined and concrete descriptions are derived mainly in the parabolic case

the generalized finite element method this paper describes a pilot design and implementation of the generalized finite element method gfem as a direct extension of the standard finite element method sfem or fem which makes possible the accurate solution of engineering problems in complex domains which may be practically impossible to solve using the fem the development of the gfem is illustrated for the laplacian in two space dimensions in domains which may include several hundreds of voids and or cracks for which the construction of meshes used by the fem is practically impossible the two main capabilities are 1 it can construct the approximation using meshes which may overlap part or all of the domain boundary 2 it can incorporate into the approximation handbook functions which are known analytically or are generated numerically and approximate well the solution of the boundary value problem in the neighborhood of corner points voids cracks etc the main tool is a special integration algorithm which we call the fast remeshing approach which is robust and works for any domain with arbitrary complexity the incorporation of the handbook functions into the gfem is done by employing the partition of unity method pum the presented formulations and implementations can be easily extended to the multi material medium where the voids are replaced by inclusions of various shapes and sizes and to the case of the elasticity problem this work can also be understood as a pilot study for the feasibility and demonstration of the capabilities of the gfem which is needed before analogous implementations are attempted in the three dmensional and nonlinear cases which are the cases of main interest for future work

arbitrary branched and intersecting cracks with the extended finite element method summary extensions of a new technique for the nite element modelling of cracks with multiple branches multiple holes and cracks emanating from holes are presented this extended nite element method x fem allows the representation of crack discontinuities and voids independently of the mesh a standard displacementbased approximation is enriched by incorporating discontinuous elds through a partition of unity method a methodology that constructs the enriched approximation based on the interaction of the discontinuous geometric features with the mesh is developed computation of the stress intensity factors sif in dierent examples involving branched and intersecting cracks as well as cracks emanating from holes are presented to demonstrate the accuracy and the robustness of the proposed technique copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

linear dependence problems of partition of unity based generalized fems a known problem of partition of unity based generalized finite element methods referred to as gfem is the linear dependence problem which leads to singular global stiffness matrices thus far attempts to eliminate the linear dependence problem have been unsuccessful numerical experiments are carried out among several gfems to investigate the problem based on the numerical experiments simple but effective approaches to eliminating the linear dependence problem are suggested

generalized finite element methods their performance and their relation to mixed methods the notion of a generalized finite element method is introduced this class of methods is analyzed and their relation to mixed methods is discussed the class of generalized finite element methods offers a wide variety of computational procedures from which particular procedures can be selected for particular problems a particular generalized finite element method which is very effective for problems with rough coefficients is discussed in detail

extended finite element method for three dimensional crack modelling an extended finite element method x fem for three dimensional crack modelling is described a discontinuous function and the two dimensional asymptotic crack tip displacement fields are added to the finite element approximation to account for the crack using the notion of partition of unity this enables the domain to be modelled by finite elements with no explicit meshing of the crack surfaces computational geometry issues associated with the representation of the crack and the enrichment of the finite element approximation are discussed stress intensity factors sifs for planar three dimensional cracks are presented which are found to be in good agreement with benchmark solutions copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

gaussian sum particle filtering we use the gaussian particle filter to build several types of gaussian sum particle filters these filters approximate the filtering and predictive distributions by weighted gaussian mixtures and are basically banks of gaussian particle filters then we extend the use of gaussian particle filters and gaussian sum particle filters to dynamic state space dss models with non gaussian noise with non gaussian noise approximated by gaussian mixtures the non gaussian noise models are approximated by banks of gaussian noise models and gaussian mixture filters are developed using algorithms developed for gaussian noise dss models as a result problems involving heavy tailed densities can be conveniently addressed simulations are presented to exhibit the application of the framework developed herein and the performance of the algorithms is examined

a generalized finite element method for the simulation of three dimensional dynamic crack propagation this paper is aimed at presenting a partition of unity method for the simulation of three dimensional dynamic crack propagation the method is a variation of the partition of unity finite element method and hp cloud method in the context of crack simulation this method allows for modeling of arbitrary dynamic crack propagation without any remeshing of the domain in the proposed method the approximation spaces are constructed using a partition of unity pu and local enrichment functions the pu is provided by a combination of shepard and finite element partitions of unity this combination of pus allows the inclusion of arbitrary crack geometry in a model without any modification of the initial discretization it also avoids the problems associated with the integration of moving least squares or conventional shepard partitions of unity used in several meshless methods the local enrichment functions can be polynomials or customized functions these functions can efficiently approximate the singular fields around crack fronts the crack propagation is modeled by modifying the partition of unity along the crack surface and does not require continuous remeshings or mappings of solutions between consecutive meshes as the crack propagates in contrast with the boundary element method the proposed method can be applied to any class of problems solvable by the classical finite element method in addition the proposed method can be implemented into most finite element data bases several numerical examples demonstrating the main features and computational efficiency of the proposed method for dynamic crack propagation are presented

the design and analysis of the generalized finite element method abstract in this paper we introduce the generalized finite element method gfem as a combination of the classical finite element method fem and the partition of unity method pum the standard finite element spaces are augmented by adding special functions which reflect the known information about the boundary value problem and the input data e g the singular functions obtained from the local asymptotic expansion of the exact solution in the neighborhood of a corner point etc the special functions are multiplied with the partition of unity corresponding to the standard linear vertex shape functions and pasted together with the existing finite element basis to construct an augmented conforming finite element space in this way the local approximability afforded by the special functions is included in the approximation while maintaining the existing infrastructure of finite element codes the major features of the gfem are 1 the essential boundary conditions can be imposed exactly as in the standard fem unlike other partition of unity based methods where this is a major issue 2 the accuracy of the numerical integration of the entries of the stiffness matrix and load vector is controlled adaptively so that the errors in integration of the special functions do not affect the accuracy of the constructed approximation this issue also has not been sufficiently addressed in other implementations of partition of unity or meshless methods and 3 linear dependencies in the system of equations are resolved by employing an easy modification of the direct linear solver the power of the gfem for solving problems in domains with complex geometry with less error and less computer resources than the standard fem is illustrated by numerical examples

bounds for decoupled design and analysis discretizations in topology optimization summary topology optimization formulations using multiple design variables per finite element have been proposed to improve the design resolution this paper discusses the relation between the number of design variables per element and the order of the elements used for analysis we derive that beyond a maximum number of design variables certain sets of material distributions cannot be discriminated based on the corresponding analysis results this makes the design description inefficient and the solution of the optimization problem non unique to prevent this we establish bounds for the maximum number of design variables that can be used to describe the material distribution for any given finite element scheme without introducing non uniqueness copyright 2016 the authors international journal for numerical methods in engineering published by john wiley sons ltd

a 3d interface enriched generalized finite element method for weakly discontinuous problems with complex internal geometries an interface enriched generalized finite element method gfem is introduced for 3d problems with discontinuous gradient fields the proposed method differs from conventional gfem by assigning the generalized degrees of freedom to the interface nodes i e nodes generated along the interface when creating integration subdomains instead of the nodes of the original mesh a linear combination of the lagrangian shape functions in these integration subelements are then used as the enrichment functions to capture the discontinuity in the gradient field this approach provides a great flexibility for evaluating the enrichment functions including for cases where elements are intersected with multiple interfaces we show that the method achieves optimal rate of convergence with meshes which do not conform to the phase interfaces at a computational cost similar to or lower than that of conventional gfem the potential of the method is demonstrated by solving several heat transfer problems with discontinuous gradient field encountered in particulate and fiber reinforced composites and in actively cooled microvascular materials

finite element analysis on implicitly defined domains an accurate representation based on arbitrary parametric surfaces in this paper we present some novel results and ideas for robust and accurate implicit representation of geometric surfaces in finite element analysis the novel contributions of this paper are threefold 1 describe and validate a method to represent arbitrary parametric surfaces implicitly 2 represent arbitrary solids implicitly including sharp features using level sets and boolean operations 3 impose arbitrary dirichlet and neumann boundary conditions on the resulting implicitly defined boundaries the methods proposed do not require local refinement of the finite element mesh in regions of high curvature ensure the independence of the domain s volume on the mesh do not rely on boundary regularization and are well suited to methods based on fixed grids such as the extended finite element method xfem numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the robustness and effectiveness of the proposed approach and show that it is possible to achieve optimal convergence rates using a fully implicit representation of object boundaries this approach is one step in the desired direction of tying numerical simulations to computer aided design cad similarly to the isogeometric analysis paradigm

a new generalized finite element method for two scale simulations of propagating cohesive fractures in 3 d summary this paper presents a novel numerical framework based on the generalized finite element method with global local enrichments gfemgl for two scale simulations of propagating fractures in three dimensions a non linear cohesive law is adopted to capture objectively the dissipated energy during the process of material degradation without the need of adaptive remeshing at the macro scale or artificial regularization parameters the cohesive crack is capable of propagating through the interior of finite elements in virtue of the partition of unity concept provided by the generalized extended finite element method and thus eliminating the need of interfacial surface elements to represent the geometry of discontinuities and the requirement of finite element meshes fitting the cohesive crack surface the proposed method employs fine scale solutions of non linear local boundary value problems extracted from the original global problem in order to not only construct scale bridging enrichment functions but also to identify damaged states in the global problem thus enabling accurate global solutions on coarse meshes this is in contrast with the available gfemgl in which the local solution field contributes only to the kinematic description of global solutions the robustness efficiency and accuracy of this approach are demonstrated by results obtained from representative numerical examples copyright 2015 john wiley sons ltd

a two scale generalized finite element approach for modeling localized thermoplasticity summary predicting localized nonlinear thermoplastic behavior and residual stresses and deformations in structures subjected to intense heating is a prevalent challenge in a range of modern engineering applications the authors present a generalized finite element method targeted at this class of problems involving the solution of intrinsically parallelizable local boundary value problems to capture localized time dependent thermo elasto plastic behavior which is embedded in the coarse structural scale approximation via enrichment functions the method accommodates approximation spaces that evolve in between time or load steps while maintaining a fixed global mesh which avoids the need to map solutions and state variables on changing meshes typical of traditional adaptive approaches representative three dimensional examples exhibiting localized transient nonlinear thermal and thermomechanical effects are presented to demonstrate the advantages of the method with respect to available approaches especially in terms of its flexibility and potential for realistic future applications in this area parallelism of the approach is also discussed copyright 2016 john wiley sons ltd

uncertainty quantification in homogenization of heterogeneous microstructures modeled by xfem an extended finite element method xfem coupled with a monte carlo approach is proposed to quantify the uncertainty in the homogenized effective elastic properties of multiphase materials the methodology allows for an arbitrary number aspect ratio location and orientation of elliptic inclusions within a matrix without the need for fine meshes in the vicinity of tightly packed inclusions and especially without the need to remesh for every different generated realization of the microstructure moreover the number of degrees of freedom in the enriched elements is dynamically reallocated for each monte carlo sample run based on the given volume fraction the main advantage of the proposed xfem based methodology is a major reduction in the computational effort in extensive monte carlo simulations compared with the standard fem approach monte carlo and xfem appear to work extremely efficiently together the monte carlo approach allows for the modeling of the size aspect ratios orientations and spatial distribution of the elliptical inclusions as random variables with any prescribed probability distributions numerical results are presented and the uncertainty of the homogenized elastic properties is discussed copyright 2011 john wiley sons ltd

forced vibrations in the medium frequency range solved by a partition of unity method with local information a new approach for the computation of the forced vibrations up to the medium frequency range is formulated for thin plates it is based on the partition of unity method pum first proposed by babuska and used here to solve the elastodynamic problem the paper focuses on the introduction of local information in the basis of the pum coming from previous approximations in order to enhance the accuracy of the solution the method may be iterative and generates a pum approximation leading to smaller models compared with the finite element ones required for a same accuracy level it shows very promising results in terms of frequency range accuracy and computational time copyright 2004 john wiley sons ltd

the discontinuous enrichment method for multiscale analysis computation naturally separates scales of a problem according to the mesh size a variety of improved numerical methods are described by multiscale considerations differing in the treatment of the unresolved fine scales the discontinuous enrichment method provides a unique multiscale approach to computation by employing fine scales that contain solutions of the homogeneous partial differential equation in a discontinuous framework the method thus combines relative ease of implementation with improved numerical performance these properties are demonstrated for both multiscale wave and transport problems pointing to the potential of considerable savings in computational resources

improved xfem an extra dof free well conditioning and interpolating xfem abstract although its unprecedentedly success in approximating the singular field around a crack tip independent of mesh discretization xfem still has been long hindered in engineering applications by its ill conditioning and the difficulty in mass lumping corresponding to extra dofs an improved xfem i xfem is developed to overcome those difficulties from three aspects 1 to eliminate the linear dependence and the ill conditioning issues of the standard and the corrected xfems 2 to get rid of extra dofs in crack tip enrichment to facilitate optimal mass lumping in dynamic analyses 3 to be interpolating at enriched nodes to enable direct essential contact boundary treatments the core of i xfem is a globally interpolating approximation based on local least squares fitting the new method is numerically examined with comprehensive comparisons with the standard xfem and the corrected xfem fries 2008 the new method s excellent performance in terms of accuracy convergence and conditioning stability are demonstrated

a numerical strategy for investigating the kinetic response of stimulus responsive hydrogels we present a strategy for obtaining numerical solutions to a system of non linear coupled evolution equations describing volume transitions in stimulus responsive hydrogels srhs the theory underlying our sharp interface model of phase transitions in srhs is provided along with the assumptions leading to the specialized formulation that is the starting point for the numerical method the discrete formulation is then developed with a hybrid extended finite element level set method xfe lsm domain integral methodologies are used consistently to extract interfacial quantities such as the mechanical driving traction the jump in the normal component of the solute flux and requisite geometric information several benchmark studies are provided to demonstrate the accuracy and robustness of the numerical strategy we then investigate various features of srh kinetics including the regimes of unstable and stable phase transitions surface pattern formation and bulk phase separation

a high order generalized fem for through the thickness branched cracks this paper presents high order implementations of a generalized finite element method for through the thickness three dimensional branched cracks this approach can accurately represent discontinuities such as triple joints in polycrystalline materials and branched cracks independently of the background finite element mesh representative problems are investigated to illustrate the accuracy of the method in combination with various discretizations and refinement strategies the combination of local refinement at crack fronts and high order continuous and discontinuous enrichments proves to be an excellent combination which can deliver convergence rates close to that of problems with smooth solutions copyright 2007 john wiley sons ltd

linear optimal fir estimation of discrete time invariant state space models this paper addresses a general p shift linear optimal finite impulse response fir estimator intended for solving universally the problems of filtering p 0 smoothing p 0 of discrete time invariant models in state space an optimal solution is found in the batch form with the initial mean square state function self determined by solving the discrete algebraic riccati equation an unbiased solution represented both in the batch and recursive forms does not involve any knowledge about noise and initial state the mean square errors in both the optimal and unbiased estimates are found via the noise power gain npg and a recursive algorithm for fast computation of the npg is supplied applications are given for fir filtering with fixed receding and full averaging horizons

generalized finite element enrichment functions for discontinuous gradient fields a general gfem xfem formulation is presented to solve two dimensional problems characterized by c0 continuity with gradient jumps along discrete lines such as those found in the thermal and structural analysis of heterogeneous materials or in line load problems in homogeneous media the new enrichment functions presented in this paper allow solving problems with multiple intersecting discontinuity lines such as those found at triple junctions in polycrystalline materials and in actively cooled microvascular materials with complex embedded networks we show how the introduction of enrichment functions yields accurate finite element solutions with meshes that do not conform to the geometry of the discontinuity lines the use of the proposed enrichments in both linear and quadratic approximations is investigated as well as their combination with interface enrichment functions available in the literature through a detailed convergence study we demonstrate that quadratic approximations do not require any correction to the method to recover optimal convergence rates and that they perform better than linear approximations for the same number of degrees of freedom in the solution of these types of problems in the linear case the effectiveness of correction functions proposed in the literature is also investigated copyright 2009 john wiley sons ltd

an interface enriched generalized fem for problems with discontinuous gradient fields summary a new generalized fem is introduced for solving problems with discontinuous gradient fields the method relies on enrichment functions associated with generalized degrees of freedom at the nodes generated from the intersection of the phase interface with element edges the proposed approach has several advantages over conventional generalized fem formulations such as a lower computational cost easier implementation and straightforward handling of dirichlet boundary conditions a detailed convergence study of the proposed method and a comparison with the standard fem are presented for heat transfer problems the method achieves the optimal rate of convergence using meshes that do not conform to the interfaces present in the domain while achieving a level of accuracy comparable to that of the standard fem with conforming meshes various application problems are presented including the conjugate heat transfer problem encountered in microvascular materials copyright 2011 john wiley sons ltd

generalized finite element method for modeling nearly incompressible bimaterial hyperelastic solids an extension of the generalized finite element method to the class of mixed finite element methods is presented to tackle heterogeneous systems with nearly incompressible non linear hyperelastic material behavior in particular heterogeneous systems with large modulus mismatch across the material interface undergoing large strains are investigated using two formulations one based on a continuous deformation map the other on a discontinuous one a bimaterial patch test is formulated to assess the ability of the two formulations to reproduce constant stress fields while a mesh convergence study is used to examine the consistency of the formulations finally compression of a model heterogeneous propellant pack is simulated to demonstrate the robustness of the proposed discontinuous deformation map formulation

on the construction of blending elements for local partition of unity enriched finite elements for computational efficiency partition of unity enrichments are preferably localized to the sub domains where they are needed it is shown that an appropriate construction of the elements in the blending area the regionwhere the enriched elements blend to unenriched elements is often crucial for good performance of local partition of unity enrichments an enhanced strain formulation is developed which leads to good performance the optimal rate of convergence is achieved for polynomial enrichments it is shown that a proper choice of the finite element shape functions and partition of unity shape functions also improves the accuracy and convergence the methods are illustrated by several examples the examples deal primarily with the signed distance function enrichment for treating discontinuous derivatives inside an element but other enrichments are also considered results show that both methods provide optimal rates of convergence

a receding horizon kalman fir filter for discrete time invariant systems a receding horizon kalman fir filter is presented that combines the kalman filter and the receding horizon strategy when the horizon initial state is assumed to be unknown the suggested filter is a fir filter form which has many good inherent properties it can always be defined irrespective of singularity problems caused by unknown information about the horizon initial state the suggested filter can be represented in either an iterative form or a standard fir form it is also shown that the suggested filter possesses the unbiasedness property and the remarkable deadbeat property irrespective of any horizon initial condition the validity of the suggested filter is illustrated by numerical examples

cubature kalman filters in this paper we present a new nonlinear filter for high dimensional state estimation which we have named the cubature kalman filter ckf the heart of the ckf is a spherical radial cubature rule which makes it possible to numerically compute multivariate moment integrals encountered in the nonlinear bayesian filter specifically we derive a third degree spherical radial cubature rule that provides a set of cubature points scaling linearly with the state vector dimension the ckf may therefore provide a systematic solution for high dimensional nonlinear filtering problems the paper also includes the derivation of a square root version of the ckf for improved numerical stability the ckf is tested experimentally in two nonlinear state estimation problems in the first problem the proposed cubature rule is used to compute the second order statistics of a nonlinearly transformed gaussian random variable the second problem addresses the use of the ckf for tracking a maneuvering aircraft the results of both experiments demonstrate the improved performance of the ckf over conventional nonlinear filters

constrained state estimation for nonlinear discrete time systems stability and moving horizon approximations state estimator design for a nonlinear discrete time system is a challenging problem further complicated when additional physical insight is available in the form of inequality constraints on the state variables and disturbances one strategy for constrained state estimation is to employ online optimization using a moving horizon approximation we propose a general theory for constrained moving horizon estimation sufficient conditions for asymptotic and bounded stability are established we apply these results to develop a practical algorithm for constrained linear and nonlinear state estimation examples are used to illustrate the benefits of constrained state estimation our framework is deterministic

the extended finite element method xfem for solidification problems an enriched finite element method for the multi dimensional stefan problems is presented in this method the standard finite element basis is enriched with a discontinuity in the derivative of the temperature normal to the interface the approximation can then represent the phase interface and the associated discontinuity in the temperature gradient within an element the phase interface can be evolved without re meshing or the use of artificial heat capacity techniques the interface is described by a level set function that is updated by a stabilized finite element scheme several examples are solved by the proposed method to demonstrate the accuracy and robustness of the method copyright 2001 john wiley sons ltd

a posteriori estimation and adaptive control of the error in the quantity of interest part i a posteriori estimation of the error in the von mises stress and the stress intensity factor in this paper we address the problem of a posteriori estimation of the error in an engineering quantity of interest which is computed from a finite element solution as an example we consider the plane elasticity problem with the von mises stress and the stress intensity factor as the quantities of interest the estimates of the error in the von mises stress at a point are obtained by partitioning the error into two components with respect to the element which includes the point the local and the pollution errors and by constructing separate estimates for each component the estimates of the error in the stress intensity factors are constructed by employing an extraction method we demonstrate that our approach gives accurate estimates for rather coarse meshes and elements of various degrees in part ii we will address the problem of the adaptive control of the error in the quantity of interest the goal of the computation and the construction of goal adaptive meshes for one or multiple goals

incremental secant modulus iteration scheme and stress recovery for simulating cracking process in quasi brittle materials using xfem in this paper an incremental secant modulus iteration scheme using the extended generalized finite element method xfem is proposed for the simulation of cracking process in quasi brittle materials described by cohesive crack models whose softening law is composed of linear segments the leading term of the displacement asymptotic field at the tip of a cohesive crack which ensures a displacement discontinuity normal to the cohesive crack face is used as the enrichment function in the xfem the opening component of the same field is also used as the initial guess opening profile of a newly extended cohesive segment in the simulation of cohesive crack propagation a statically admissible stress recovery sar technique is extended to cohesive cracks with special treatment of non homogeneous boundary tractions the application of locally normalized co ordinates to eliminate possible ill conditioning of sar and the influence of different weight functions on sar are also studied several mode i cracking problems in quasi brittle materials with linear and bilinear softening laws are analysed to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed scheme as well as the characteristics of global responses and local fields obtained numerically by the xfem

higher order stable generalized finite element method the generalized finite element method gfem is a galerkin method where the trial space is obtained by augmenting the trial space of the standard finite element method fem by non polynomial functions called enrichments that mimic the local behavior of the unknown solution of the underlying variational problem the gfem has excellent approximation properties but its conditioning could be much worse than that of the fem however if the enrichments satisfy certain properties then the conditioning of the gfem is not worse than that of the standard fem and the gfem is referred to as the stable gfem sgfem in this paper we address the higher order sgfem that yields higher order convergence and suggest a specific modification of the enrichment function that guarantees the required conditioning yielding a robust implementation of the higher order sgfem

accurate recovery based upper error bounds for the extended finite element framework this paper introduces a recovery type error estimator yielding upper bounds of the error in energy norm for linear elastic fracture mechanics problems solved using the extended finite element method xfem the paper can be considered as an extension and enhancement of a previous work in which the upper bounds of the error were developed in a fem framework the upper bound property requires the recovered solution to be equilibrated and continuous the proposed technique consists of using a recovery technique especially adapted to the xfem framework that yields equilibrium at a local level patch by patch then a postprocess based on the partition of unity concept is used to obtain continuity the result is a very accurate but only nearly statically admissible recovered stress field with small equilibrium defaults introduced by the postprocess sharp upper bounds are obtained using a new methodology accounting for the equilibrium defaults as demonstrated by the numerical tests

the generalized finite element method an example of its implementation and illustration of its performance the generalized finite element method gfem was introduced in reference 1 as a combination of the standard fem and the partition of unity method the standard mapped polynomial finite element spaces are augmented by adding special functions which reflect the known information about the boundary value problem and the input data the geometry of the domain the loads and the boundary conditions the special functions are multiplied with the partition of unity corresponding to the standard linear vertex shape functions and are pasted to the existing finite element basis to construct a conforming approximation the essential boundary conditions can be imposed exactly as in the standard fem adaptive numerical quadrature is used to ensure that the errors in integration do not affect the accuracy of the approximation this paper gives an example of how the gfem can be developed for the laplacian in domains with multiple elliptical voids and illustrates implementation issues and the superior accuracy of the gfem versus the standard fem copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

discrete inclusion models for reinforced composites comparative performance analysis and modeling challenges abstract we report the results of a comparative analysis of mesh independent discrete inclusion models and point out some shortcomings of classical approaches in the approximation of the strain field across an inclusion artificial continuity and the slip profile along an inclusion oscillatory behavior we also present novel embedded reinforcement models based on partition of unity enrichment strategies adaptive h refinement and order regularity extensions these novel models are assessed by means of mesh convergence studies and it is shown that they improve the quality of the solution by significantly decreasing local spurious oscillations in the slip profile along an inclusion

analysis and applications of a generalized finite element method with global local enrichment functions abstract this paper presents a procedure to build enrichment functions for partition of unity methods like the generalized finite element method and the hp cloud method the procedure combines classical global local finite element method concepts with the partition of unity approach it involves the solution of local boundary value problems using boundary conditions from a global problem defined on a coarse discretization the local solutions are in turn used to enrich the global space using the partition of unity framework the computations at local problems can be parallelized without difficulty allowing the solution of large problems very efficiently the effectiveness of the approach in terms of convergence rates and computational cost is investigated in this paper we also analyze the effect of inexact boundary conditions applied to local problems and the size of the local domains on the accuracy of the enriched global solution key aspects of the computational implementation in particular the numerical integration of generalized fem approximations built with global local enrichment functions are presented the method is applied to fracture mechanics problems with multiple cracks in the domain our numerical experiments show that even on a serial computer the method is very effective and allows the solution of complex problems our analysis also demonstrates that the accuracy of a global problem defined on a coarse mesh can be controlled using a fixed number of global degrees of freedom and the proposed global local enrichment functions

robust and direct evaluation of j2 in linear elastic fracture mechanics with the x fem numerical simulation of fracture mechanics is of major importance in the design of structures such as planes or dams for such complex structures robustness and accuracy of the simulations are necessary the finite element method is classically considered for the simulation of such problems however the crack must be explicitly meshed in order to incorporate the discontinuity of the displacement field across crack faces this process has to be handled at each step of propagation the main drawback of this approach is the computational and human cost of remeshing the x fem method was proposed as a response to this issue 1 2 it uses the concept of partition of unity 3 in two ways first to take into account the displacement jump across crack faces far away from the crack tip and also to enrich the approximation close to the tip with some analytical asymptotic fields another important issue in fracture mechanics is the prediction of crack growth direction several criteria have been proposed one can cite for example the maximum hoop stress criterion 4 the maximum tangential stress criterion or the symmetry principle 5 the maximum energy release rate criterion 6 also called vectorial j integral criterion 7 is an alternative which was initially proposed by hellen and blackburn 7 the main difference in evaluating this criterion with respect to the classical j integral rely on the difficulties in the evaluation of the second component j2 of the energy release rate vector j it is well known that j1 which is basically the j integral is path independent concerning j2 herrmann and herrmann 8 have shown that it is path independent only in a modified manner i e by adding an extra contribution on the crack faces however this new contribution requires an accurate determination of the mechanical fields near the crack tip it is well known that the quality of these fields near a singularity is not ensured in the finite element context this is why some authors proposed specific strategies to avoid the integration near the tip for an accurate numerical evaluation of j2 9 10 for enriched finite