Post-buckling analysis of thin-walled structures using the SPH method

Abstract

In this investigation a meshless shell formulation is proposed for the post-buckling analysis of thin-walled structures using a non-linear dynamic explicit scheme. This method is an adaptation of the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method to deal with shell-like structures, while keeping its character of a strong formulation based on the principle of collocation directly applied on the differential equilibrium equations. The present SPH formulation is an extension of the continuum-corrected and stabilized SPH method allowing a thin structure to be modeled by using only one layer of particles to represent the shell mid-surface. Application of this method for the post-buckling analysis of several academic examples, shows its interest and its potential especially in terms of CPU computing time saving while keeping a very good level of accuracy compared to the classical SPH method and to the Finite Element method.