0000000000346574

AUTHOR

I. Benedetti

Boundary element method for magneto electro elastic laminates

A boundary integral formulation and its numerical implementation are presented for the analysis of magneto electro elastic media. The problem is formulated by using a suitable set of generalized variables, namely the generalized displacements, which are comprised of mechanical displacements and electric and magnetic scalar potentials, and generalized tractions, that is mechanical tractions, electric displacement and magnetic induction. The governing boundary integral equation is obtained by generalizing the reciprocity theorem to the magneto electro elasticity. The fundamental solutions are calculated through a modified Lekhnitskii's approach, reformulated in terms of generalized magneto-el…

research product

A multiscale approach to polycrystalline materials damage and failure

A two-scale three-dimensional approach for degradation and failure in polycrystalline materials is presented. The method involves the component level and the grain scale. The damageinduced softening at the macroscale is modelled employing an initial stress boundary element approach. The microscopic degradation is explicitly modelled associating Representative Volume Elements (RVEs) to relevant points of the macro continuum and employing a cohesive-frictional 3D grain-boundary formulation to simulate intergranular degradation and failure in the Voronoi morphology. Macro-strains are downscaled as RVEs' periodic boundary conditions, while overall macro-stresses are obtained upscaling the micro…

research product

A coupled plasticity-damage cohesive-frictional interface for low-cycle fatigue analysis

A novel thermodynamically consistent cohesive-frictional model for the analysis of interface degradation and failure under either monotonic quasi-static loading or cyclic loading in low-cycle fatigue problems is proposed. Starting from the definition of a suitable Helmholtz energy density function, a phenomenological interface model is developed in the framework of plasticity and damage mechanics. In particular, a coupled plasticitydamage activation function is defined and employed together the consistent evolution rules to capture the evolution of damage and plasticity under the action of the external loads. Due to the specific features of such threshold and flow rules, the initiation and …

research product

NONLOCAL LAYER-WISE ADVANCED THEORIES FOR LAMINATED PLATES

Eringen nonlocal layer-wise models for the analysis of multilayered plates are formulated in the framework of the Carrera Unified Formulation and the Reissner Mixed Variational Theorem (RMVT). The use of the layer-wise approach and RMVT ensures the fulfilment of the transverse stress equilibrium at the layers’ interfaces and allows the analysis of plates with layers exhibiting different characteristic lengths in their nonlocal behaviour. A Navier solution has been implemented and tested for the static bending of rectangular simply-supported plates. The obtained results favourably compare against available three-dimensional analytic results and demonstrate the features of the proposed theori…

research product

Progressive non-linear damage of variable angle tow composite plates by a Ritz approach

In this work a Ritz model for progressive non-linear damage analysis of variable angle tow composite plates is presented. The damage is treated in the framework of continuum damage mechanics and its evolution is based on a linear softening law with which four damage indices are computed for degrading the mechanical properties of the material. A set of analyses have been carried out to investigate how damage evolves in VAT composite plates under progressive loading.

research product

A BOUNDARY ELEMENT FORMULATION FOR MICROMECHANICAL HOMOGENIZATION OF POLYCRYSTALLINE MATERIALS WITH PIEZOELECTRIC COUPLING

A novel boundary element formulation for the evaluation of the effective properties of threedimensional polycrystalline aggregates with piezoelectric coupling is presented. The aggregates are modelled at the scale of their constituent crystals and are artificially generated through Voronoi-Laguerre tessellations. The electro-mechanical behaviour of each crystal is represented upon introducing an ad-hoc mesh of its boundary and a generalised integral representation of the governing equations of the piezoelectric problem. The behaviour of the whole aggregate is then retrieved upon introducing a suitable set of electro-mechanical interface conditions at the grain boundaries. With respect to cl…

research product

Structures with Surface-Bonded PZT Piezoelectric Patches: a BEM Investigation into the Strain-transfer Mechanism for SHM applications

In this work a three-dimensional BEM model is used for the analysis of structures with cracks and surface bonded piezoelectric PZT patches used as strain sensors. The cracked structure is modelled by the dual boundary element method, which allows for accurate and reliable crack analysis, while the piezoelectric patch is analyzed by a finite element state-space approach, that embodies both the full electro-mechanical coupling and the suitable sensor’s boundary conditions. The model is used to investigate the strain-transfer mechanism from an host elastic structure to the piezoelectric layer, taking into account the effect of the adhesive layer, as well as the mechanical interaction between t…

research product

IMPLICIT MESH DISCONTINUOUS GALERKIN FOR VARIABLE ANGLE TOW MULTILAYERED PLATES

This works presents a novel computational scheme for variable angle tow (VAT) multilayered plates [1]. The characteristic features of the proposed scheme are the combined use of a discontinuous Galerkin (dG) formulation and an implicitly defined mesh. The formulation is based on the principle of virtual displacements (PVD) and the Equivalent Single Layer (ESL) assumption for the mechanical behavior of the VAT plates [2]. The problem is first placed within the dG framework by suitably introducing an auxiliary variable and by rewriting the set of equations governing ESL VAT plates as a firstorder system of differential equations. Following Arnold et al.[3] and by introducing suitably defined …

research product

VIRTUAL ELEMENT METHOD FOR COMPUTATIONAL HOMOGENIZATIONS OF UNIDIRECTIONAL FIBER-REINFORCED COMPOSITE MATERIALS

The Virtual Element Method (VEM) is a generalization of the Finite Element Method (FEM) for the treatment of general polygonal/polyhedral mesh elements. Despite its recent introduction, VEM has been applied to several problems in structural mechanics. Due to such capability of dealing with mesh elements of general shape and of naturally addressing the presence of hanging nodes, the VEM ensures a noticeable simplification in the data preparation stage of the analysis, allowing implementing a mesh generation process over complex multi-domain geometries in a fully automated way. Moreover, for the lowest order VEM used in this contribution,no numerical integration is required to compute the sys…

research product