SUMMARYA new algorithm is developed to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the material point method for problems involving extremely large tensile deformations and rotations. In the proposed procedure, particle domains are convected with the material motion more accurately than in the generalized interpolation material point method. This feature is crucial to eliminate instability in extension, which is a common shortcoming of most particle methods. Also, a novel alternative set of grid basis functions is proposed for efficiently calculating nodal force and consistent mass integrals on the grid. Specifically, by taking advantage of initially parallelogram-shaped particle domains, and treating the deformation gradient as constant over the particle domain, the convected particle domain is a reshaped parallelogram in the deformed configuration. Accordingly, an alternative grid basis function over the particle domain is constructed by a standard 4-node finite element interpolation on the parallelogram. Effectiveness of the proposed modifications is demonstrated using several large deformation solid mechanics problems.

SUMMARYConvected particle domain interpolation (CPDI) is a recently developed extension of the material point method, in which the shape functions on the overlay grid are replaced with alternative shape functions, which (by coupling with the underlying particle topology) facilitate efficient and algorithmically straightforward evaluation of grid node integrals in the weak formulation of the governing equations. In the original CPDI algorithm, herein called CPDI1, particle domains are tracked as parallelograms in 2‐D (or parallelepipeds in 3‐D). In this paper, the CPDI method is enhanced to more accurately track particle domains as quadrilaterals in 2‐D (hexahedra in 3‐D). This enhancement will be referred to as CPDI2. Not only does this minor revision remove overlaps or gaps between particle domains, it also provides flexibility in choosing particle domain shape in the initial configuration and sets a convenient conceptual framework for enrichment of the fields to accurately solve weak discontinuities in the displacement field across a material interface that passes through the interior of a grid cell. The new CPDI2 method is demonstrated, with and without enrichment, using one‐dimensional and two‐dimensional examples. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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The components of prosthetic hip bearings may experience in-vivo subluxation and edge loading on the acetabular socket as a result of joint laxity, causing abnormally high, damaging contact stresses. In this research, edge-loaded contact of prosthetic hips is examined analytically and experimentally in the most commonly used categories of material pairs. In edge-loaded ceramic-on-ceramic hips, Hertzian contact theory yields accurate (conservatively, <10% error) predictions of the contact dimensions. Moreover, Hertzian theory successfully captures slope and curvature trends in the dependence of contact patch geometry on the applied load. In an edge-loaded ceramic-on-metal pair, a similar degree of accuracy is observed in the contact patch length; however, the contact width is less accurately predicted due to the onset of subsurface plasticity, which is predicted for loads >400 N. Hertzian contact theory is shown to be ill-suited to edge-loaded ceramic-on-polyethylene pairs due to polyethylene’s nonlinear material behavior. This work elucidates the methods and the accuracy of applying classical contact theory to edge-loaded hip bearings. The results help to define the applicability of Hertzian theory to the design of new components and materials to better resist severe edge loading contact stresses.

Validating simulated predictions of internal damage within armor ceramics is preferable to simply assessing a modelÕs ability to predict penetration depth, especially if one hopes to perform subsequent ''second strike'' analyses. We present the results of a study in which crack networks are seeded by using a statistically perturbed strength, the median of which is inherited from a deterministic ''smeared damage'' model, with adjustments to reflect experimentally established size effects. This minor alteration of an otherwise conventional damage model noticeably mitigates mesh dependencies and, at virtually no computational cost, produces far more realistic cracking patterns that are well suited for validation against X-ray computed tomography (XCT) images of internal damage patterns. For Brazilian, spall, and indentation tests, simulations share qualitative features with externally visible damage. However, the need for more stringent quantitative validation, software quality testing, and subsurface XCT validation, is emphasized.