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An axisymmetrical membrane element for large deformations is developed which is based on Ogden's non‐linear elastic material law. Special attention is given to the linearization procedure to obtain a quadratically convergence behaviour within Newton's method. Several examples show the applicability and performance of the proposed formulation.

The practical behaviour of problems exhibiting bifurcation with secondary branches cannot be studied in general by using standard path‐following methods such as arc‐length schemes. Special algorithms have to be employed for the detection of bifurcation and limit points and furthermore for branch‐switching. Simple methods for this purpose are given by inspection of the determinant of the tangent stiffness matrix or the calculation of the current stiffness parameter. Near stability points, the associated eigenvalue problem has to be solved in order to calculate the number of existing branches. The associated eigenvectors are used for a perturbation of the solution at bifurcation points. This perturbation is performed by adding the scaled eigenvector to the deformed configuration in an appropriate way. Several examples of beam and shell problems show the performance of the method.

Several a posteriori error indicators and error estimators for frictionless contact problems are compared. In detail, residual based error estimators, error indicators relying on superconvergence properties and error estimators based on duality principles are investigated. Applications are to 2D solids under the hypothesis of nonlinear elastic material behaviour associated with finite deformations. A penalization technique is applied to enforce multilateral boundary conditions due to contact. The approximate solution of the problem is obtained by using the finite element method. Several numerical results are reported to show the applicability of the adaptive algorithm to the considered problems.

Many engineering structures exhibit loss of stability under static and dynamic loading. Due to the significance of these phenomena in engineering design this topic has attracted considerable attention during the last decades. In recent years much effort has been made to devise algorithms within finite element analysis to investigate the static stability behaviour of structures. With these methods stable and unstable paths can be traced, and limit or bifurcation points can be computed efficiently. The associated arc‐length or branch‐switching procedures are today standard tools in existing finite element codes.

The subject of this paper is the computation of instability points in mechanical problems with the finite element method. The objective is to extend the application of critical point detection methods to problems with inequality constraints originating from damage and contact. A simple bilinear model is considered for the damage problems. A bilateral, frictionless contact formulation is used for the contact problems. Among the critical point detection methods the focus is laid on the critical displacement method and the extended system. At first a possible combination of both methods is evaluated by applying them to damage problems. A prediction method based on the extended system is developed to facilitate the comparison of both methods. Secondly, the extended system is used as a computation method for critical points in two‐dimensional contact problems.

The numerical solution of contact problems via the penalty method yields approximate satisfaction of contact constraints. The solution can be improved using augmentation schemes. However their efficiency is strongly dependent on the value of the penalty parameter and usually results in a poor rate of convergence to the exact solution. In this paper we propose a new method to perform the augmentations. It is based on estimated values of the augmented Lagrangians. At each augmentation the converged state is used to extract some data. Such information updates a database used for the Lagrangian estimation. The prediction is primarily based on the evolution of the constraint violation with respect to the evolution of the contact forces. The proposed method is characterised by a noticeable efficiency in detecting nearly exact contact forces, and by superlinear convergence for the subsequent minimisation of the residual of constraints. Remarkably, the method is relatively insensitive to the penalty parameter. This allows a solution which fulfils the constraints very rapidly, even when using penalty values close to zero.

The paper describes the extension of the critical displacement method (CDM), presented by Oñate and Matias in 1996, to the instability analysis of structures with non‐linear material behaviour using a simple damage model. The extended CDM is useful to detect instability points using a prediction of the critical displacement field and a secant load‐displacement relationship accounting for material non‐linearities. Examples of application of CDM to the instability analysis of structures using bar and solid finite elements are presented.

Presents an implementation of the algebraic multigrid method. It can work in two ways: as pure multigrid method and as a pre‐conditioner for the conjugate gradient method. Shows applications of the iterative solvers for problems in linear and non‐linear elasticity. Shows the range of possible applications with different examples with regular and non‐regular meshes and three‐dimensional problems.

A model for the decohesion of aggregates of suspended particulate material in a binding matrix is developed. In the model cohesive zones which envelop each particle individually are introduced at the particulate/binder interface. During progressive loading, the deterioration of the cohesive zones is initiated if constraints placed on the microstress fields are violated. In order for the material behavior to be energetically admissible, the deterioration of the material at a point is in the form of a reduction of the elasticity tensor’s eigenvalues at that point. The material within the cohesive zones deteriorates until the constraints are met. In order to isolate and study the effects of interfacial deterioration, outside of the cohesive zones, the material is unaltered. Mathematical properties of the model, as well as physical restrictions, are discussed. Numerical simulations are performed employing the finite element method to illustrate the approach in three‐dimensional applications.

To obtain more reliable crash simulations the history of the structure related to the forming process is considered. For this goal the variables defining the current state have to be transferred from one mesh to the other in order to maintain a consistent discretization of the whole structure consisting of several pre‐formed parts. This is accomplished here by remeshing the structure after the forming process and by transferring the current mechanical properties. In performing such a transfer a numerical error cannot be avoided; the results of this approach are therefore compared with computations in which this transfer is not applied to assess the performance of the presented procedure.