Adaptive selective ES-FEM limit analysis of cracked plane-strain structures

Abstract

This paper presents a simple and efficient approach for predicting the plastic limit loads in cracked planestrain structures.We use two levels of mesh repartitioning for the finite element limit analysis. The master level handles an adaptive primal-mesh process through a dissipation-based indicator. The slave level performs the subdivision of each triangle into three sub-triangles and constitutes a dual mesh from a pair of two adjacent sub-triangles shared by common edges of the primal mesh. Applying a strain smoothing projection to the strain rates on the dual mesh, the incompressibility constraint and the flow rule constraint are imposed over the edge-based smoothing domains and everywhere in the problem domain. The limit analysis problem is recast into the compact form of a second-order cone programming (SOCP) for the purpose of exploiting interior-point solvers. The present method retains a low number of optimization variables. It offers a convenient way for designing and solving the large-scale optimization problems effectively. Several benchmark examples are given to show the simplicity and effectiveness of the present method.