Open Access

ARTICLE

Analysis of Particulate Composite Materials Using an Element Overlay Technique

H. Okada¹, C. T. Liu², T. Ninomiya¹, Y. Fukui¹, N. Kumazawa¹

1 Kagoshima University, Kagoshima, Japan
2 AFRL/PRSB, Edwards AFB, USA

Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences 2004, 6(4), 333-348. https://doi.org/10.3970/cmes.2004.006.333

Abstract

Formulations and applications of an element overlay technique for the mesoscopic analyses of composite structures are presented in this paper. As a zooming technique, the element overlay technique has been applied to various engineering problems. A finite element mesh having finer mesh discretization is superposed at the region to zoom the spatial resolution of analysis. Such a numerical technique is known as the s-version FEM (S-FEM). This paper aims at developing an S-FEM technique that is suited for the mesoscopic analysis of particulate composite materials. Local finite element models that contain the second phase material and its immediate vicinity are superposed on global finite element model. Each local finite element model contains only one particle and is relative to simple to build. The global finite element model does not model particles at all. To distribute a number of particles in the analysis region, we place the local finite element model at the location of particles, just by specifying their locations. The local and global finite element models are built independently. Building and modifying an analysis model is much simpler than the case of an ordinary finite element method. Mathematical formulations, computational strategies and some numerical examples are presented for the problems of distributed holes/voids and particles. The same analysis technique can be applied to other types of composite structures.

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