Despite the growing significance of generalized and
microstructure continua, there are still open issues on
boundary conditions including contact. The overall goal of
the proposed research project is to develop, analyze and
implement a novel set of contact formulations for higher
order gradient materials, paving the way for further
applications in the simulation of complex materials. For
the bulk material, consideration of higher gradients in the
strain energy function allows us to simulate complex
materials with microstructure with high accuracy and
efficiency.
As we have already shown and experimentally validated in
[1], even extremely coarse meshes using a second gradient
approach on fiber reinforced polymers provides similar
accuracy compared to a first gradient formulation resolving
single fiber bundles, i.e. using mesh sizes several
magnitudes smaller. We expect a similar impact for the
contact surface, noting that the application of a first
gradient approach will remain possible at the cost of high
computational resource and energy consumption and a
detailed resolution of the contact surface.
DIC measurement of a 36 [mm] specimen in 60◦ configuration (left) and simulation results (right) at 4.6 [mm] total displacement, colors indicate local stretches in horizontal direction in [mm/m].
- [1] J. Schulte, M. Dittmann, S.R.Eugster, S. Hesch, T. Reinicke, F. dell’Isola, C. Hesch. Isogeometric analysis of fiber reinforced composites using Kirchhoff–Love shell elements. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 362:112845, 2020.
Group: Prof. Dr. Christian Hesch
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