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This study presents finite element (FE) and generalized regression neural network (GRNN) approaches for modeling multiple crack growth problems and predicting crack-growth directions under the influence of multiple crack parameters.

To determine the crack-growth direction in aluminum specimens, multiple crack parameters representing some degree of crack propagation complexity, including crack length, inclination angle, offset and distance, were examined. FE method models were developed for multiple crack growth simulations. To capture the complex relationships among multiple crack-growth variables, GRNN models were developed as nonlinear regression models. Six input variables and one output variable comprising 65 training and 20 test datasets were established.

The FE model could conveniently simulate the crack-growth directions. However, several multiple crack parameters could affect the simulation accuracy. The GRNN offers a reliable method for modeling the growth of multiple cracks. Using 76% of the total dataset, the NN model attained an R2 value of 0.985.

The models are presented for static multiple crack growth problems. No material anisotropy is observed.

In practical crack-growth analyses, the NN approach provides significant benefits and savings.

The proposed GRNN model is simple to develop and accurate. Its performance was superior to that of other NN models. This model is also suitable for modeling multiple crack growths with arbitrary geometries. The proposed GRNN model demonstrates its prediction capability with a simpler learning process, thus producing efficient multiple crack growth predictions and assessments.

This paper aims to introduce a new numerical approach based on the local weak form and the Petrov–Galerkin idea to numerically simulation of a predator–prey system with two-species, two chemicals and an additional chemotactic influence.

In the first proceeding, the space derivatives are discretized by using the direct meshless local Petrov–Galerkin method. This generates a nonlinear algebraic system of equations. The mentioned system is solved by using the Broyden’s method which this technique is not related to compute the Jacobian matrix.

This current work tries to bring forward a trustworthy and flexible numerical algorithm to simulate the system of predator–prey on the nonrectangular geometries.

The proposed numerical results confirm that the numerical procedure has acceptable results for the system of partial differential equations.

The purpose of this paper is to present a new discretisation scheme, based on equation-coupled approach and high-order five-point integrated radial basis function (IRBF) approximations, for solving the first biharmonic equation, and its applications in fluid dynamics.

The first biharmonic equation, which can be defined in a rectangular or non-rectangular domain, is replaced by two Poisson equations. The field variables are approximated on overlapping local regions of only five grid points, where the IRBF approximations are constructed to include nodal values of not only the field variables but also their second-order derivatives and higher-order ones along the grid lines. In computing the Dirichlet boundary condition for an intermediate variable, the integration constants are used to incorporate the boundary values of the first-order derivative into the boundary IRBF approximation.

These proposed IRBF approximations on the stencil and on the boundary enable the boundary values of the derivative to be exactly imposed, and the IRBF solution to be much more accurate and not influenced much by the RBF width. The error is reduced at a rate that is much greater than four. In fluid dynamics applications, the method is able to capture well the structure of steady highly non-linear fluid flows using relatively coarse grids.

The main contribution of this study lies in the development of an effective high-order five-point stencil based on IRBFs for solving the first biharmonic equation in a coupled set of two Poisson equations. A fast rate of convergence (up to 11) is achieved.

The high-pressure accumulator has been widely used in the hydraulic system. Failure pressure prediction is crucial for the safe design and integrity assessment of the accumulators. The purpose of this study is to accurately predict the burst pressure and location for the accumulator shells due to internal pressure.

This study concentrates the non-linear finite element simulation procedure, which allows determination of the burst pressure and crack location using extensive plastic straining criterion. Meanwhile, the full-scale hydraulic burst test and the analytical solution are conducted for comparative analysis.

A good agreement between predicted and measured the burst pressure that was obtained, and the predicted failure point coincided very well with the fracture location of the actual shell very well. Meanwhile, the burst pressure of the shells increases with wall thickness, independent of the length. It can be said that the non-linear finite element method can be employed to predict the failure behavior of a cylindrical shell with sufficient accuracy.

This paper can provide a designer with additional insight into how the pressurized hollow cylinder might fail, and the failure pressure has been predicted accurately with a minimum error below 1%, comparing the numerical results with experimental data.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze numerically the blowup in finite time of the solutions to a one-dimensional, bidirectional, nonlinear wave model equation for the propagation of small-amplitude waves in shallow water, as a function of the relaxation time, linear and nonlinear drift, power of the nonlinear advection flux, viscosity coefficient, viscous attenuation, and amplitude, smoothness and width of three types of initial conditions.

An implicit, first-order accurate in time, finite difference method valid for semipositive relaxation times has been used to solve the equation in a truncated domain for three different initial conditions, a first-order time derivative initially equal to zero and several constant wave speeds.

The numerical experiments show a very rapid transient from the initial conditions to the formation of a leading propagating wave, whose duration depends strongly on the shape, amplitude and width of the initial data as well as on the coefficients of the bidirectional equation. The blowup times for the triangular conditions have been found to be larger than those for the Gaussian ones, and the latter are larger than those for rectangular conditions, thus indicating that the blowup time decreases as the smoothness of the initial conditions decreases. The blowup time has also been found to decrease as the relaxation time, degree of nonlinearity, linear drift coefficient and amplitude of the initial conditions are increased, and as the width of the initial condition is decreased, but it increases as the viscosity coefficient is increased. No blowup has been observed for relaxation times smaller than one-hundredth, viscosity coefficients larger than ten-thousandths, quadratic and cubic nonlinearities, and initial Gaussian, triangular and rectangular conditions of unity amplitude.

The blowup of a one-dimensional, bidirectional equation that is a model for the propagation of waves in shallow water, longitudinal displacement in homogeneous viscoelastic bars, nerve conduction, nonlinear acoustics and heat transfer in very small devices and/or at very high transfer rates has been determined numerically as a function of the linear and nonlinear drift coefficients, power of the nonlinear drift, viscosity coefficient, viscous attenuation, and amplitude, smoothness and width of the initial conditions for nonzero relaxation times.

The purpose of this paper is to address unsteady heat conduction in two subsets of ordinary bodies. One subset consists of a large plane wall, a long cylinder and a sphere in one dimension. The other subset consists of a short cylinder and a large rectangular bar in two dimensions. The prevalent assumptions in the two subsets are: constant initial temperature, uniform surface heat flux and thermo-physical properties invariant with temperature. The engineering applications of the unsteady heat conduction deal with the determination of temperature–time histories in the two subsets using electric resistance heating, radiative heating and fire pool heating.

To this end, a novel numerical procedure named the enhanced method of discretization in time (EMDT) transforms the linear one-dimensional unsteady, heat conduction equations with non-homogeneous boundary conditions into equivalent nonlinear “quasi–steady” heat conduction equations having the time variable embedded as a time parameter. The equivalent nonlinear “quasi–steady” heat conduction equations are solved with a finite difference method.

Based on the numerical computations, it is demonstrated that the approximate temperature–time histories in the simple subset of ordinary bodies (large plane wall, long cylinder and sphere) exhibit a perfect matching over the entire time domain 0 < t < ∞ when compared against the rigorous exact temperature–time histories expressed by classical infinite series. Furthermore, using the method of superposition of solutions in the convoluted subset (short cylinder and large rectangular crossbar), the same level of agreement in the approximate temperature–time histories in the simple subset of ordinary bodies is evident.

The performance of the proposed EMDT coupled with a finite difference method is exhaustively assessed in the solution of the unsteady, one-dimensional heat conduction equations with prescribed surface heat flux for: a subset of one-dimensional bodies (plane wall, long cylinder and spheres) and a subset of two-dimensional bodies (short cylinder and large rectangular bar).

The purpose of this study is to investigate the post-buckling analysis of functionally graded columns by using three analytical, approximate and numerical methods. A pre-defined function as an initial assumption for the post-buckling path is introduced to solve the differential equation. The finite difference method is used to approximate the lateral deflection of the column based on the differential equation. Moreover, the finite element method is used to derive the tangent stiffness matrix of the column.

The non-linear buckling analysis of functionally graded materials is carried out by using three analytical, finite difference and finite element methods. The elastic deformation and Euler-Bernoulli beam theory are considered to establish the constitutive and kinematics relations, respectively. The governing differential equation of the post-buckling problem is derived through the energy method and the calculus variation.

An incremental iterative solution and the perturbation of the displacement vector at the critical buckling point are performed to determine the post-buckling path. The convergence of the finite element results and the effects of geometric and material characteristics on the post-buckling path are investigated.

The key point of the research is to compare three methods and to detect error sources by considering the derivation process of relations. This comparison shows that a non-incremental solution in the analytical and finite difference methods and an initial assumption in the analytical method lead to an error in results. However, the post-buckling path in the finite element method is traced by the updated tangent stiffness matrix in each load step without any initial limitation.

This study implements the fourth-order phase field method (PFM) for modeling fracture in brittle materials. The weak form of the fourth-order PFM requires C¹ basis functions for the crack evolution scalar field in a finite element framework. To address this, non-Sibsonian type shape functions that are nonpolynomial types based on distance measures, are used in the context of natural neighbor shape functions. The capability and efficiency of this method are studied for modeling cracks.

The weak form of the fourth-order PFM is derived from two governing equations for finite element modeling. C⁰ non-Sibsonian shape functions are derived using distance measures on a generalized quad element. Then these shape functions are degree elevated with Bernstein-Bezier (BB) patch to get higher-order continuity (C¹) in the shape function. The quad element is divided into several background triangular elements to apply the Gauss-quadrature rule for numerical integration. Both fourth-order and second-order PFMs are implemented in a finite element framework. The efficiency of the interpolation function is studied in terms of convergence and accuracy for capturing crack topology in the fourth-order PFM.

It is observed that fourth-order PFM has higher accuracy and convergence than second-order PFM using non-Sibsonian type interpolants. The former predicts higher failure loads and failure displacements compared to the second-order model due to the addition of higher-order terms in the energy equation. The fracture pattern is realistic when only the tensile part of the strain energy is taken for fracture evolution. The fracture pattern is also observed in the compressive region when both tensile and compressive energy for crack evolution are taken into account, which is unrealistic. Length scale has a certain specific effect on the failure load of the specimen.

Fourth-order PFM is implemented using C¹ non-Sibsonian type of shape functions. The derivation and implementation are carried out for both the second-order and fourth-order PFM. The length scale effect on both models is shown. The better accuracy and convergence rate of the fourth-order PFM over second-order PFM are studied using the current approach. The critical difference between the isotropic phase field and the hybrid phase field approach is also presented to showcase the importance of strain energy decomposition in PFM.

Intumescent coatings are nowadays a dominant passive system used to protect structural materials in case of fire. Due to their reactive swelling behaviour, intumescent coatings are particularly complex materials to be modelled and predicted, which can be extremely useful especially for performance-based fire safety designs. In addition, many parameters influence their performance, and this challenges the definition and quantification of their material properties. Several approaches and models of various complexities are proposed in the literature, and they are reviewed and analysed in a critical literature review.

Analytical, finite-difference and finite-element methods for modelling intumescent coatings are compared, followed by the definition and quantification of the main physical, thermal, and optical properties of intumescent coatings: swelled thickness, thermal conductivity and resistance, density, specific heat capacity, and emissivity/absorptivity.

The study highlights the scarce consideration of key influencing factors on the material properties, and the tendency to simplify the problem into effective thermo-physical properties, such as effective thermal conductivity. As a conclusion, the literature review underlines the lack of homogenisation of modelling approaches and material properties, as well as the need for a universal modelling method that can generally simulate the performance of intumescent coatings, combine the large amount of published experimental data, and reliably produce fire-safe performance-based designs.

Due to their limited applicability, high complexity and little comparability, the presented literature review does not focus on analysing and comparing different multi-component models, constituted of many model-specific input parameters. On the contrary, the presented literature review compares various approaches, models and thermo-physical properties which primarily focusses on solving the heat transfer problem through swelling intumescent systems.

The presented literature review analyses and discusses the various modelling approaches to describe and predict the behaviour of swelling intumescent coatings as fire protection for structural materials. Due to the vast variety of available commercial products and potential testing conditions, these data are rarely compared and combined to achieve an overall understanding on the response of intumescent coatings as fire protection measure. The study highlights the lack of information and homogenisation of various modelling approaches, and it underlines the research needs about several aspects related to the intumescent coating behaviour modelling, also providing some useful suggestions for future studies.

In order to make full use of the generalized greyness of interval grey number, this paper analyzes the properties and its applications of generalized greyness.

Firstly, the static properties of generalized greyness in bounded background domain, infinite background domain and infinitesimal background domain are analyzed. Then, this paper gives the dynamic properties of generalized greyness in bounded background domain, infinite background domain and infinitesimal background domain and explains the dialectical principle contained in it. Finally, the generalized greyness is used to judge the effectiveness of interval grey number transformation.

The results show that the generalized greyness of interval grey number has relativity, normativity, unity, eternity and conservation. The static and dynamic properties of generalized greyness are the same in the infinite and infinitesimal background domain, while they are different in the bounded background domain. The generalized greyness can be used as an index to judge whether the grey number transformation is greyness or information preservation.

The research shows that the generalized greyness can be used as an index to judge the validity of the grey number transformation and also can be applied in grey evaluation, grey decision-making and grey prediction and so on.

The paper succeeds in realizing the mathematical principle of “white is black”, the “greyness clock-slow effect” of the value domain of interval grey number and the generalized greyness conservation principle, which provides a theoretical basis for the rational use of generalized greyness of interval grey number.