Engineering topics

Gallagher, Richard H.

Publications and source records attributed to Gallagher, Richard H..

4 records

NASA NTRS1991

Integrated force method - Compatibility conditions of structural mechanics for finite element analysis

The equilibrium equations and the compatibility conditions are fundamental to the analyses of structures. However, anyone who undertakes even a cursory generic study of the compatibility conditions can discover, with little effort, that historically this facet of structural mechanics had not been adequately researched by the profession. Now the compatibility conditions (CC's) have been researched and are understood to a great extent. For finite element discretizations, the CC's are banded and can be divided into three distinct categories: (1) the interface CC's, (2) the cluster or field CC's, and (3) the external CC's. The generation of CC's requires the separating of a local region, then writing the deformation displacement relation (ddr) for the region, and finally, the eliminating of the displacements from the ddr. The procedure to generate all three types of CC's is presented and illustrated through examples of finite element models. The uniqueness of the CC's thus generated is shown. The utilization of CC's has resulted in the novel integrated force method (IFM). The solution that is obtained by the IFM converges with a significantly fewer number of elements, compared to the stiffness and the hybrid methods.

Patnaik, Surya N.↗

NASA NTRS1990

Integrated force method versus displacement method for finite element analysis

A novel formulation termed the integrated force method (IFM) has been developed in recent years for analyzing structures. In this method all the internal forces are taken as independent variables, and the system equilibrium equations (EE's) are integrated with the global compatibility conditions (CC's) to form the governing set of equations. In IFM the CC's are obtained from the strain formulation of St. Venant, and no choices of redundant load systems have to be made, in constrast to the standard force method (SFM). This property of IFM allows the generation of the governing equation to be automated straightforwardly, as it is in the popular stiffness method (SM). In this report IFM and SM are compared relative to the structure of their respective equations, their conditioning, required solution methods, overall computational requirements, and convergence properties as these factors influence the accuracy of the results. Overall, this new version of the force method produces more accurate results than the stiffness method for comparable computational cost.

Patnaik, Surya N.↗

NASA NTRS1990

Compatibility conditions of structural mechanics for finite element analysis

The equilibrium equations and the compatibility conditions are fundamental to the analyses of structures. However, anyone who undertakes even a cursory generic study of the compatibility conditions can discover, with little effort, that historically this facet of structural mechanics had not been adequately researched by the profession. Now the compatibility conditions (CC's) have been researched and are understood to a great extent. For finite element discretizations, the CC's are banded and can be divided into three distinct categories: (1) the interface CC's; (2) the cluster or field CC's; and (3) the external CC's. The generation of CC's requires the separating of a local region, then writing the deformation displacement relation (ddr) for the region, and finally, the eliminating of the displacements from the ddr. The procedure to generate all three types of CC's is presented and illustrated through examples of finite element models. The uniqueness of the CC's thus generated is shown.

Patnaik, Surya N.↗

NASA NTRS1989

Design sensitivity analysis of boundary element substructures

The ability to reduce or condense a three-dimensional model exactly, and then iterate on this reduced size model representing the parts of the design that are allowed to change in an optimization loop is discussed. The discussion presents the results obtained from an ongoing research effort to exploit the concept of substructuring within the structural shape optimization context using a Boundary Element Analysis (BEA) formulation. The first part contains a formulation for the exact condensation of portions of the overall boundary element model designated as substructures. The use of reduced boundary element models in shape optimization requires that structural sensitivity analysis can be performed. A reduced sensitivity analysis formulation is then presented that allows for the calculation of structural response sensitivities of both the substructured (reduced) and unsubstructured parts of the model. It is shown that this approach produces significant computational economy in the design sensitivity analysis and reanalysis process by facilitating the block triangular factorization and forward reduction and backward substitution of smaller matrices. The implementatior of this formulation is discussed and timings and accuracies of representative test cases presented.

Kane, James H.↗