Multi‐scale modelling of heterogeneous structures with inelastic constitutive behavior

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to consider the computational tools for solving a strongly coupled multi‐scale problem in the context of inelastic structural mechanics.Design/methodology/approachIn trying to maintain the highest level of generality, the finite element method is employed for representing the microstructure at this fine scale and computing the solution. The main focus of this work is the implementation procedure which crucially relies on a novel software product developed by the first author in terms of component template library (CTL).FindingsThe paper confirms that one can produce very powerful computational tools by software coupling technology described herein, which allows the class of complex problems one can successfully tackle nowadays to be extended significantly.Originality/valueThis paper elaborates upon a new multi‐scale solution strategy suitable for highly non‐linear inelastic problems.

Partitioned solution to fluid–structure interaction problem in application to free-surface flows

“…Most importantly, the proposed solution method allows to perform coupled simulations and obtain reliable solution to complex fluid-structure interaction by using the existing codes, that were initially developed to support either fluid or structure motion computation. This is achieved thanks to the use of the component technology [49,61] providing the coupling between existing software products. Therefore, the proposed solution method for fluid-structure interaction can utilize very different discretization strategies to obtain the optimal accuracy; The case in point concerns FE for the structure and FV for the fluid.…”

“…This framework was built using the middleware Communication Template Library (CTL) [61] which offers good performances, and can therefore be used for scientific computing of large systems. An important feature is the possibility to couple types of software product that were initially not programmed to be coupled (here FEAP for the structure and OpenFOAM for the fluid), even if they are based on different discretization techniques (respectively FV for the fluid and FE for the structure) and were programmed in different languages, C++ and Fortran.…”

“…We use for this work the Communication Template Library (CTL, see [57,61]) that allows to re-use existing codes in a generic way, either called as libraries on the same computer, or as remote executables through network. With the CTL, we are able to couple existing stand-alone software, in a quite straightforward way, even if they are programmed in different langages (Fortran for the structure part, C++ for the fluid part), and to conserve the inner parallelism of each component.…”

Elements of a Computational Framework for Coupled Simulations

“…For the programmer it looks and feels like an object in an object oriented language (OOL) like C++, where it was originally formulated in. In languages like the FORTRAN dialects, which lack objects, it looks like a subroutine call ( [5], [8], and [9]). To take as an example fluid structure interaction ( [1], [7], and [8]), the structure solver would be wrapped inside a component, the fluid solver as well, and may be the mesh-movement in an arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian formulation would be a separate component as well.…”

“…This picture can be carried over to the software. We view the software for each sub-system as a software component ( [1], [8] and [9]), and out of these we assemble the whole coupled systems. But of course, just the components are not enough.…”