X.Y. Cui^1,2, G. R. Liu^2,3, G. Y. Li¹, X. Zhao², T.T. Nguyen², G.Y. Sun¹

CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.28, No.2, pp. 109-126, 2008, DOI:10.3970/cmes.2008.028.109

Abstract A smoothed finite element method (SFEM) is presented to analyze linear and geometrically nonlinear problems of plates and shells using bilinear quadrilateral elements. The formulation is based on the first order shear deformation theory. In the present SFEM, the elements are further divided into smoothing cells to perform strain smoothing operation, and the strain energy in each smoothing cell is expressed as an explicit form of the smoothed strain. The effect of the number of divisions of smoothing cells in elements is investigated in detail. It is found that using three smoothing cells for bending More >

Jin-Ho Roh¹, In Lee²

CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.26, No.1, pp. 13-30, 2008, DOI:10.3970/cmes.2008.026.013

Abstract A methodology to maintain the configuration of inflated membrane structures using shape memory alloy (SMA) film actuator is numerically investigated. The two- dimensional incremental formulation of the SMA constitutive model is developed. New parameters related to the thermodynamic energy equation are introduced to describe more general behaviors of the SMA film. With numerical algorithm of wrinkling and SMAs, the interactions between the inflated membrane structure and the SMA film are investigated by using a finite element program. The effectiveness of SMA film to control the configuration of an inflated membrane structure is examined. To demonstrate More >

Tienfuan Kerh^1,2, J.S. Lai¹, D. Gunaratnam², R. Saunders²

CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.26, No.1, pp. 1-12, 2008, DOI:10.3970/cmes.2008.026.001

Abstract Taiwan frequently suffers from strong ground motion, and the current building code is essentially based on two seismic zones, A and B. The design value of horizontal acceleration for zone A is 0.33g, and the value for zone B is 0.23g. To check the suitability of these values, a series of actual earthquake records are considered for evaluating peak ground acceleration (PGA) for each of the zones by using neural network models. The input parameters are magnitude, epicenter distance, and focal depth for each of the checking stations, and the peak ground acceleration is calculated… More >

C. Moulinec¹, R. Issa², J.-C. Marongiu³, D. Violeau⁴

CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.25, No.3, pp. 133-148, 2008, DOI:10.3970/cmes.2008.025.133

Abstract The gridless Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) numerical method is preferably used in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to simulate complex flows with one or several convoluted free surfaces. This type of flows requires distorted meshes with classical Eulerian mesh-based methods or very fine meshes with Volume of Fluid method. Few 3-D SPH simulations have been carried out to our knowlegde so far, mainly due to prohibitive computational investment since the number of particles required in 3-D is usually too large to be handled by a single processor. In this paper, a parallel 3-D SPH code is More >

J.R. Jimenez-Octavio¹, O. Lopez-Garcia², E. Pilo¹, A. Carnicero²

CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.25, No.2, pp. 81-98, 2008, DOI:10.3970/cmes.2008.025.081

Abstract This paper presents a multidisciplinary design and optimization method of power transmission lines. This optimization method solves both mechanical and electrical problems by a new strongly coupled method that also optimizes the potential designs using a genetic algorithm. A multi-objective function is formulated to simplify a constrained typical optimization problem into an unconstrained one. The scope of this work is the sizing and configuration optimization problem with fixed topology. The method is applied to a railway overhead transmission line. The genetic algorithm is applied to mechanical, electrical and electromechanical optimization problems obtaining good results. Finally, More >

Hanqing Jiang¹, Junqiang Lu², Min-Feng Yu², Yonggang Huang³

CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.24, No.2&3, pp. 95-102, 2008, DOI:10.3970/cmes.2008.024.095

Abstract The periodic lattice registry of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) have been exploited for the possibilities of development of nanodevices. This paper studied the telescoping behaviors of double-walled carbon nanotubes (DWCNTs) by atomic-scale finite element and tight-bind Green function methods. It was found that telescoping a DWCNT (e.g., (6,3)/(12,6)) will induce a rotational motion of the inner CNT that has a chirl angle θ (0° < θ < 30°). This telescoping-induced rotational motion does not exist for armchair and zigzag DWCNTs due to the symmetry of CNTs. The rotational angle is completely determined by the chirality of More >

H. Nguyen-Van¹, N. Mai-Duy², T. Tran-Cong³

CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.23, No.3, pp. 209-222, 2008, DOI:10.3970/cmes.2008.023.209

Abstract This paper reports a study of linear elastic analysis of two-dimensional piezoelectric structures using a smoothed four-node piezoelectric element. The element is built by incorporating the strain smoothing method of mesh-free conforming nodal integration into the standard four-node quadrilateral piezoelectric finite element. The approximations of mechanical strains and electric potential fields are normalized using a constant smoothing function. This allows the field gradients to be directly computed from shape functions. No mapping or coordinate transformation is necessary so that the element can be used in arbitrary shapes. Through several examples, the simplicity, efficiency and reliability More >

Liviu Marin¹, Henry Power¹, Richard W. Bowtell², Clemente Cobos Sanchez², Adib A. Becker¹, Paul Glover²，Arthur Jones¹

CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.23, No.3, pp. 149-174, 2008, DOI:10.3970/cmes.2008.023.149

Abstract We investigate the reconstruction of a divergence-free surface current distribution from knowledge of the magnetic flux density in a prescribed region of interest in the framework of static electromagnetism. This inverse problem is motivated by the design of gradient coils for use in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and is formulated using its corresponding integral representation according to potential theory. A novel boundary element method (BEM) which employs linear interpolation on quadratic surfaces and also satisfies the continuity equation for the current density, i.e. a divergence-free BEM, is presented. Since the discretised BEM system is ill-posed More >

Shuwang Li¹, Xiangrong Li¹, John Lowengrub^1,2, Martin Glicksman³

FDMP-Fluid Dynamics & Materials Processing, Vol.4, No.1, pp. 27-42, 2008, DOI:10.3970/fdmp.2008.004.027

Abstract In this paper, we suggest a deterministic mechanism for the generation and development of side-branches in dendritic growth. The present authors investigated recently [Glicksman, Lowengrub, and Li (2006)] the existence of such a deterministic branching mechanism induced through the Gibbs-Thomson-Herring (GTH [Herring (1951)]) anisotropic capillary boundary condition. In this paper, we focus our study on an anisotropic kinetic boundary condition. We develop and apply accurate boundary integral methods in 2D and 3D, in which a time and space rescaling scheme is implemented, that are capable of separating the dynamics of growth from those of morphology More >

Adeline Tchikango Siagam¹, Gunther Brenner¹, Peter Giese², Volker Wesling²

FDMP-Fluid Dynamics & Materials Processing, Vol.4, No.2, pp. 77-84, 2008, DOI:10.3970/fdmp.2008.004.077

Abstract The PTA (''Plasma-Transferred-Arc'') is a widespread variant of plasma powder processes to manufacture coatings against corrosion or abrasion. For the optimization of this technique, an explanation of the processes which lead to a maximal deposition performance (i.e. maximal quantity of powder converted per time) is required. Especially the gas and particle flow in the region between the burner nozzle and the work piece is of interest. In the present study, flow simulations (Computational Fluid Dynamics, CFD) have been done in order to investigate the determining factors for the dimensioning of the processes. Additionally, velocity measurements… More >