Direct modifications of tetrahedral meshes

Purpose During the industrial design process, a product is usually modified and analyzed repeatedly until reaching the final design. Modifying the model and regenerating a mesh for every update during this process is very time consuming. To improve efficiency, it is necessary to circumvent the computer-aided design modeling stage when possible and directly modify the meshes to save valuable time. The purpose of this paper is to develop a method for mesh modifications. Design/methodology/approach In contrast to existing studies, which focus on one or a class of modifications, this paper comprehensively studies mesh union, mesh gluing, mesh cutting and mesh partitioning. To improve the efficiency of the method, the paper presents a fast and effective surface mesh remeshing algorithm based on a ball-packing method and controls the remeshing regions with a size field. Findings Examples and results show that the proposed mesh modification method is efficient and effective. The proposed method can be also applied to meshes with different material properties, which is very different with previous work that is only suitable for the meshes with same material property. Originality/value This paper proposes an efficient and comprehensive tetrahedral mesh modification method, through which engineers can directly modify meshes instead of models and save time.

Peridynamic Model for the Numerical Simulation of Anchor Bolt Pullout in Concrete

Predictive simulation of anchor pullout from concrete structures is not only a serious problem in structural mechanics but also very important in structural design safety. In the finite element method (FEM), the crack paths or the points of crack initiation usually need to be assumed in advance. Otherwise, some special crack growth treatment or adaptive remeshing algorithm is normally used. In this paper, an extended peridynamic method was introduced to avoid the difficulties found in FEM, and its application on anchor bolt pullout in plain concrete is studied. In the analysis, the interaction between the anchor bolt and concrete is represented by a modified short-range force and an extended bond-level model for concrete is developed. Numerical analysis results indicate that the peak pullout load obtained and the crack branching of the anchoring system agreed well with the experimental investigations.

Quasi-Static Simulation of Crack Growth in Elastic Materials Considering Internal Boundaries and Interfaces

This work presents numerical methods used for predicting crack paths in technicalstructures based on the theory of linear elastic fracture mechanics. The FE-method is usedin combination with an efficient remeshing algorithm to simulate crack growth. A post pro-cessor providing loading parameters such as the J-integral and stress intensity factors (SIF) ispresented. Path-independent contour integrals are used to avoid special requirements concern-ing crack tip meshing and to enable efficient calculations for domains including interfaces andinternal boundaries. In particular, the interaction of cracks and internal boundaries and inter-faces is investigated. The simulation combines crack propagation within elastic bodies and atbi-material interfaces. The latter is based on a cohesive zone model. The presented numericalresults of crack paths are verified by experiments.