Incompressibility Constraint Research Articles

A priori and a posteriori error analysis of a mixed DG method for the three-field quasi-Newtonian Stokes flow

Abstract In this paper we propose and analyse a new mixed-type DG method for the three-field quasi-Newtonian Stokes flow. The scheme is based on the introduction of the stress and strain tensor as further unknowns as well as the elimination of the pressure variable by means of the incompressibility constraint. As such, the resulting system involves three unknowns: the stress, the strain tensor and the velocity. All these three unknowns are approximated using discontinuous piecewise polynomials, which offers flexibility for enforcing the symmetry of the stress and the strain tensor. The unique solvability and a comprehensive convergence error analysis for all the variables are performed. All the variables are proved to converge optimally. Adaptive mesh refinement guided by a posteriori error estimator is computationally efficient, especially for problems involving singularity. In line of this mechanism we derive a residual-type a posteriori error estimator, which constitutes the second main contribution of the paper. In particular, we employ the elliptic reconstruction in conjunction with the Helmholtz decomposition to derive the a posteriori error estimator, which avoids using the averaging operator. Several numerical experiments are carried out to verify the theoretical findings.

Shakedown analysis of incompressible materials under cyclic loads: A locking-free CS-FEM-Q5 numerical approach

Volumetric locking may occur in plastic analysis of incompressible materials using low-order finite elements due to incompressibility constraints. This study presents a locking-free smoothed five-node quadrilateral element-based approach for plastic analysis in structural engineering. The proposed Q5-element employing four cell-based smoothing domains effectively alleviates the volumetric locking issues, here in the problems under plane strain conditions. The resulting large-scale optimization problem is formulated in a conic programming form, enabling efficient use of the interior-point optimizer. Numerical investigations demonstrate the method’s effectiveness in alleviating volumetric locking, accurately predicting collapse and shakedown limits, and generating interaction diagrams for load-carrying capacity and structural collapse mechanisms.

Approximation‐based implicit integration algorithm for the Simo‐Miehe model of finite‐strain inelasticity

AbstractWe propose a simple, efficient, and reliable procedure for implicit time stepping, regarding a special case of the viscoplasticity model proposed by Simo and Miehe (1992). The kinematics of this popular model is based on the multiplicative decomposition of the deformation gradient tensor, allowing for a combination of Newtonian viscosity and arbitrary isotropic hyperelasticity. The algorithm is based on approximation of precomputed solutions. Both Lagrangian and Eulerian versions of the algorithm with equivalent properties are available. The proposed numerical scheme is non‐iterative, unconditionally stable, and first order accurate. Moreover, the integration algorithm strictly preserves the inelastic incompressibility constraint, symmetry, positive definiteness, and w‐invariance. The accuracy of stress calculations is verified in a series of numerical tests, including non‐proportional loading and large strain increments. In terms of stress calculation accuracy, the proposed algorithm is equivalent to the implicit Euler method with strict inelastic incompressibility. The algorithm is implemented into MSC.MARC and a demonstration initial‐boundary value problem is solved.

An SPH framework for drained and undrained loading over large deformations

AbstractWe propose a new approach for performing drained and undrained loading of elastoplastic geomaterials over large deformations using smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH), a meshfree continuum particle method, combined with the modified Cam Clay (MCC) model of critical state soil mechanics. The numerical approach draws upon a novel one‐particle two‐phase penalty‐method based formulation for handling undrained loading in saturated soils, which allows tracking of the buildup of pore‐water pressures under combined shearing and compression. Large‐scale parallelized simulations are employed to accommodate a significant number of degrees of freedom in a three‐dimensional setting. After verification and benchmark testing, the SPH based formulation is used to analyze the propagation of reverse faults through fluid‐saturated clay deposits and the rupture of strike‐slip faults across earthen embankments. The computational methodology tests the robustness of the meshfree approach in situations where the soil tends to dilate on the ‘dry’ side of the critical state line and to compact on the ‘wet’ side, but cannot, because of the incompressibility constraint imposed by undrained loading. Our results extend the current understanding of fault rupture modeling and further demonstrate the potential of our framework together with the SPH method for large deformation analyses of complex problems in geotechnics.

A hyperelastic extended Kirchhoff–Love shell model with out-of-plane normal stress: II. An isogeometric discretization method for incompressible materials

This is Part II of a multipart article on a hyperelastic extended Kirchhoff–Love shell model with out-of-plane normal stress. We introduce an isogeometric discretization method for incompressible materials and present test computations. Accounting for the out-of-plane normal stress distribution in the out-of-plane direction affects the accuracy in calculating the deformed-configuration out-of-plane position, and consequently the nonlinear response of the shell. The return is more than what we get from accounting for the out-of-plane deformation mapping. The traction acting on the shell can be specified on the upper and lower surfaces separately. With that, the model is now free from the “midsurface’ location in terms of specifying the traction. In dealing with incompressible materials, we start with an augmented formulation that includes the pressure as a Lagrange multiplier and then eliminate it by using the geometrical representation of the incompressibility constraint. The resulting model is an extended one, in the Kirchhoff–Love category in the degree-of-freedom count, and encompassing all other extensions in the isogeometric subcategory. We include ordered details as a recipe for making the implementation practical. The implementation has two components that will not be obvious but might be critical in boundary integration. The first one is related to the edge-surface moment created by the Kirchhoff–Love assumption. The second one is related to the pressure/traction integrations over all the surfaces of the finite-thickness geometry. The test computations are for dome-shaped inflation of a flat circular shell, rolling of a rectangular plate, pinching of a cylindrical shell, and uniform hydrostatic pressurization of the pinched cylindrical shell. We compute with neo-Hookean and Mooney–Rivlin material models. To understand the effect of the terms added in the extended model, we compare with models that exclude some of those terms.

Isogeometric analysis of hyperelastic Timoshenko beams under large deformation and incompressibility constraints

This article investigates the nonlinear analysis of hyperelastic planar curved beams based on the total Lagrangian Timoshenko theory. The fully incompressible neo-Hookean model has been selected as the constitutive relation to accurately capture large deformations. The nonlinear equations and boundary conditions derived from the virtual work principle are solved using the Newton–Raphson method. Employing isogeometric analysis with NURBS functions to discretize the unknown kinematics, including displacements and rotation, and the linearized governing equations. The study accounts for conservative and non-conservative forces, validating results against available experimental and numerical results reported in the literature, confirming the proposed formulation’s effectiveness and precision.

Local discontinuous Galerkin method coupled with the implicit‐explicit Runge–Kutta method for the time‐dependent micropolar fluid equations

AbstractIn this article, the spatial local discontinuous Galerkin (LDG) approximation coupled with the temporal implicit‐explicit Runge–Kutta (RK) evolution for the micropolar fluid equations are adopted to construct the discretization method. To avoid the incompressibility constraint, the artificial compressibility strategy method is used to convert the micropolar fluid equations into the Cauchy–Kovalevskaja type equations. Then the LDG method based on the modal expansion and the implicit‐explicit RK method are properly combined to construct the expected third‐order method. Theoretically, the unconditionally stable of the fully discrete method are derived in multidimensions for triangular meshs. And the numerical experiments are given to verify the theoretical and effectiveness of the presented methods.

Stabilized mixed material point method for incompressible fluid flow analysis

This paper proposes novel and robust stabilization strategies for accurately modeling incompressible fluid flow problems in the material point method (MPM). To address the modeling of Newtonian fluids with incompressibility constraints, a new mixed implicit MPM formulation is proposed. Here, instead of solving the velocity and pressure fields as the unknown variables like the typical Eulerian computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver, the proposed approach adopts a monolithic displacement–pressure formulation inspired by the mixed-form updated-Lagrangian Finite Element Method (FEM). To satisfy the inf–sup stability condition, two stabilization strategies are integrated into the formulation: the variational multiscale method (VMS) and the pressure-stabilization Petrov–Galerkin method (PSPG). By concurrently solving the displacement and pressure fields, the developed monolithic solver obviates the need for free-surface detection as well as Dirichlet and Neumann pressure imposition, in contrast to the fractional-step method. This attribute mitigates spurious pressure and velocity oscillations in simulating dynamic and transient flow problems. This study also addresses other prevalent challenges in MPM simulations, such as the pressure oscillations triggered by cell-crossing errors, particle-distribution-induced quadrature errors, and particle-grid information transfer. To resolve these issues, the quadratic B-Spline basis function, the delta-correction method, and the Taylor particle-in-cell method are incorporated into the proposed mixed MPM formulation, thereby enhancing numerical stability. The efficacy of the proposed stabilized incompressible MPM framework is validated through several benchmark cases, comparing the obtained results with other numerical methods and analytical solutions. Furthermore, the method’s capability in simulating real-world problems involving violent free-surface fluid motion is demonstrated through comparisons with experimental results of water sloshing and dam break scenarios.

Error estimates for a viscosity-splitting scheme in time applied to non-Newtonian fluid flows

A time fractional-step method is presented for numerical solutions of the incompressible non-Newtonian fluids for which the viscosity is non-linear depending on the shear-rate magnitude according to a generic model. The method belongs to a class of viscosity-splitting procedures and it consists of separating the convection term and incompressibility constraint into two time steps. Unlike the conventional projection methods, the viscosity is not dropped in the last step allowing to enforce the full original boundary conditions on the end-of-step velocity which eliminates any concerns about the numerical boundary layers. We carry out a rigorous error analysis and provide a full first-order error estimate for both the velocity and pressure solutions in the relevant norms. Numerical results are presented for two test examples of non-Newtonian fluid flows to demonstrate the theoretical analysis and confirm the reliability of this viscosity-splitting scheme.

Density-constrained Chemotaxis and Hele-Shaw flow

We consider a model of congestion dynamics with chemotaxis, where the density of cells follows the chemical signal it generates, while observing an incompressibility constraint (incompressible parabolic-elliptic Patlak-Keller-Segel model). We show that when the chemical diffuses slowly and attracts the cells strongly, then the dynamics of the congested cells is well approximated by a surface-tension driven free boundary problem. More precisely, we rigorously establish the convergence of the solution to the characteristic function of a set whose evolution is determined by the classical Hele-Shaw free boundary problem with surface tension.The problem is set in a bounded domain, which leads to an interesting analysis on the limiting boundary conditions. Namely, we prove that the assumption of Robin boundary conditions for the chemical potential leads to a contact angle condition for the free interface (in particular Neumann boundary conditions lead to an orthogonal contact angle condition, while Dirichlet boundary conditions lead to a tangential contact angle condition).

Higher-order phase field fracture simulation in nearly incompressible viscoelasticity

The phase field modeling of viscoelastic fracture can effectively predict complex crack behavior and offer valuable insights for analyzing time-dependent failure mechanisms. However, its application in nearly incompressible viscoelastic materials presents several numerical challenges, including the volumetric locking and inhibition of crack opening. In addition, the low computational efficiency remains a significant challenge in the development of the phase field models (PFMs). Previous studies have shown that the fourth-order phase field theory can improve the convergence rate of the numerical solution with a smoother phase field. In this study, a fourth-order PFM is proposed, which incorporates the B-bar method and the material penalization to predict the fracture behavior of viscoelastic materials limited by the near compressibility. The additional C1 continuity requirement on the phase field is ensured in the isogeometric framework. No extra degrees of freedom are introduced to resolve the locking problem, which is practical for the PFM, especially in three-dimensional (3D) applications. The loosening of the near incompressibility constraints in the fully damaged zone is achieved by the material penalization, which allows the crack to open freely while preserving the constraints in other regions. The accuracy of the fourth-order PFM is verified through one-dimensional (1D) simulations. Benchmark examples are performed to investigate the numerical behavior of the model. Comparisons between the predicted results and the existing data demonstrate the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed PFM.

Entropically damped artificial compressibility for the discretization corrected particle strength exchange method in incompressible fluid mechanics

We present a consistent mesh-free numerical scheme for solving the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations. Our method is based on entropically damped artificial compressibility for imposing the incompressibility constraint explicitly, and the Discretization-Corrected Particle Strength Exchange (DC-PSE) method to consistently discretize the differential operators on mesh-free particles. We further couple our scheme with Brinkman penalization to solve the Navier–Stokes equations in complex geometries. The method is validated using the 3D Taylor–Green vortex flow and the lid-driven cavity flow problem in 2D and 3D, where we also compare our method with hr-SPH and report better accuracy for DC-PSE. In order to validate DC-PSE Brinkman penalization, we study flow past obstacles, such as a cylinder, and report excellent agreement with previous studies.

Design and analysis of an exactly divergence-free hybridised discontinuous Galerkin method for incompressible flows on meshes with quadrilateral cells

We generalise a hybridised discontinuous Galerkin method for incompressible flow problems to non-affine cells, showing that with a suitable element mapping the generalised method preserves a key invariance property that eludes most methods, namely that any irrotational component of the prescribed force is exactly balanced by the pressure gradient and does not affect the velocity field. This invariance property can be preserved in the discrete problem if the incompressibility constraint is satisfied in a sufficiently strong sense. We derive sufficient conditions to guarantee discretely divergence-free functions are exactly divergence-free and give examples of divergence-free finite elements on meshes with triangular, quadrilateral, tetrahedral, or hexahedral cells generated by a (possibly non-affine) map from their respective reference cells. In the case of quadrilateral cells, we prove an optimal error estimate for the velocity field that does not depend on the pressure approximation. Our analysis is supported by numerical results.

An immersed peridynamics model of fluid-structure interaction accounting for material damage and failure

This paper develops and benchmarks an immersed peridynamics method to simulate the deformation, damage, and failure of hyperelastic materials within a fluid-structure interaction framework. The immersed peridynamics method describes an incompressible structure immersed in a viscous incompressible fluid. It expresses the momentum equation and incompressibility constraint in Eulerian form, and it describes the structural motion and resultant forces in Lagrangian form. Coupling between Eulerian and Lagrangian variables is achieved by integral transforms with Dirac delta function kernels, as in standard immersed boundary methods. The major difference between our approach and conventional immersed boundary methods is that we use peridynamics, instead of classical continuum mechanics, to determine the structural forces. We focus on non-ordinary state-based peridynamic material descriptions that allow us to use a constitutive correspondence framework that can leverage well-characterized nonlinear constitutive models of soft materials. The convergence and accuracy of our approach are compared to both conventional and immersed finite element methods using widely used benchmark problems of nonlinear incompressible elasticity. We demonstrate that the immersed peridynamics method yields comparable accuracy with similar numbers of structural degrees of freedom for several choices of the size of the peridynamic horizon. We also demonstrate that the method can generate grid-converged simulations of fluid-driven material damage growth, crack formation and propagation, and rupture under large deformations.

An evolving space framework for Oseen equations on a moving domain

This article considers non-stationary incompressible linear fluid equations in a moving domain. We demonstrate the existence and uniqueness of an appropriate weak formulation of the problem by making use of the theory of time-dependent Bochner spaces. It is not possible to directly apply established evolving Hilbert space theory due to the incompressibility constraint. After we have established the well-posedness, we derive and analyse a first order time discretisation of the system.

Application of Weighted Least Squares Meshless Method to Incompressible Flows

Meshless methods have been successfully applied to solve a large number of inviscid and viscous compressible flows in both two and three dimensional flow fields. However, the conventional methods of solution for compressible flow equations cannot be applied to incompressible flow equations. This is due to the basic difference in the nature of the pressure variable in the compressible and incompressible flows. Pressure acts as a thermodynamic variable in case of compressible flows and can be easily updated by using the equation of state. In contrast, in case of incompressible flows, the pressure is merely responsible for enforcing the incompressibility constraint and hence cannot be updated by the equation of state. This has led to the development of numerical methods based on Helmholtz Decomposition to solve for the fluid flows in the incompressible flow regimes. Here, we have applied weighted least squares meshless method to solve for the flows in the incompressible flow regime using the projection method based on Helmholtz Decomposition. The standard test cases of two dimensional lid driven cavity flow at Reynolds numbers of 100, 400 and 1000 have been solved using the weighted least squares meshless method. A good match between the results of the test case using the meshless methods and conventional CFD methods for the solution of the incompressible flows has been obtained.

A centroid-enriched strain-smoothed radial point interpolation method for nearly incompressible elastoplastic problems in solid mechanics

While edge-based (2D) and face-based (3D) smoothed radial point interpolation methods (ES-RPIM and FS-RPIM) have demonstrated excellent performance in solid mechanics, the volumetric locking problem limits their applications in nearly incompressible problems. This paper develops a centroid-enriched edge-based/face-based smoothed RPIM (CE-ES-RPIM and CE-FS-RPIM) to address the volumetric locking problem in nearly incompressible problems. The proposed method comprises the following elements: (1) a centroid-enriched scheme is creatively used and implemented into the traditional ES-RPIM and FS-RPIM framework, in which the centroids of triangular mesh are added as spatial discretization nodes; (2) the strain-smoothing technique is performed on triangle (2D) or tetrahedron (3D) mesh to maintain the linear exactness of the radial point interpolation method; and (3) the combination of the centroid-enriched scheme and strain smoothing technique makes the ratio of the number of displacement equations to the number of incompressible constraints reach the optimal value of 2, effectively eliminating volumetric locking. The accuracy, effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method are validated on several 2D and 3D nearly incompressible benchmark examples. All results demonstrate that the proposed method can provide accurate numerical results under an incompressible limitation and provide better performance than conventional quadratic element methods.

Unified three-dimensional finite elements for large strain analysis of compressible and nearly incompressible solids

This work proposes a displacement-based finite element model for large strain analysis of isotropic compressible and nearly-incompressible hyperelastic materials. Constitutive law is written in terms of invariants of the right Cauchy-Green tensor; coupled and decoupled formulations of strain energy functions are presented, whereas a penalty function is used to impose an incompressibility constraint. Based on a total Lagrangian formulation, the nonlinear governing equations are thus obtained by employing the principle of virtual displacements. Analytic expression of both internal forces vector and tangent matrix of linear and high-order hexahedral finite elements are derived by adopting a three-dimensional formalism based on the Carrera Unified Formulation. Popular benchmark problems in hyperelasticity are analyzed to establish the capabilities of the present implementation of fully-nonlinear solid elements in the case of compressible and nearly-incompressible beams, cylindrical shells, and curved structures.

A numerical framework for modelling tire mechanics accounting for composite materials, large strains and frictional contact

We present a general framework for the analysis and modelling of frictional contact involving composite materials. The study has focused on composite materials formed by a matrix of rubber and synthetic or metallic fibres, which is the case of standard tires. We detail the numerical treatment of incompressibility at large deformations that rubber can experience, as well as the stiffening effect that properly oriented fibres will induce within the rubber. To solve the frictional contact between solids, a Dual Augmented Lagrangian Multiplier Method is used together with the Mortar method. This ensures a variationally consistent estimation of the contact forces. A modified Serial-Parallel Rule of Mixtures is employed to model the behaviour of composite materials. This is a simple and novel methodology that allows the blending of constitutive behaviours as diverse as rubber (very low stiffness and incompressible behaviour) and steel (high stiffness and compressible behaviour) taking into account the orientation of the fibres within the material. The locking due to the incompressibility constraint in the rubber material has been overcome by using Total Lagrangian mixed displacement-pressure elements. A collection of numerical examples is provided to show the accuracy and consistency of the methodology presented when solving frictional contact, incompressibility and composite materials under finite strains.

Statistical field theory for nonlinear elasticity of polymer networks with excluded volume interactions.

Polymer networks formed by cross linking flexible polymer chains are ubiquitous in many natural and synthetic soft-matter systems. Current micromechanics models generally do not account for excluded volume interactions except, for instance, through imposing a phenomenological incompressibility constraint at the continuum scale. This work aims to examine the role of excluded volume interactions on the mechanical response. The approach is based on the framework of the self-consistent statistical field theory of polymers, which provides an efficient mesoscale approach that enables the accounting of excluded volume effects without the expense of large-scale molecular modeling. A mesoscale representative volume element is populated with multiple interacting chains, and the macroscale nonlinear elastic deformation is imposed by mapping the end-to-end vectors of the chains by this deformation. In the absence of excluded volume interactions, it recovers the closed-form results of the classical theory of rubber elasticity. With excluded volume interactions, the model is solved numerically in three dimensions using a finite element method to obtain the energy, stresses, and linearized moduli under imposed macroscale deformation. Highlights of the numerical study include: (i) the linearized Poisson's ratio is very close to the incompressible limit without a phenomenological imposition of incompressibility; (ii) despite the harmonic Gaussian chain as a starting point, there is an emergent strain-softening and strain-stiffening response that is characteristic of real polymer networks, driven by the interplay between the entropy and the excluded volume interactions; and (iii) the emergence of a deformation-sensitive localization instability at large excluded volumes.