A refinement indicator for adaptive quasicontinuum approaches for structural lattices

in International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering (in press)

The quasicontinuum method is a concurrent multiscale approach in which lattice models are fully resolved in small regions of interest and coarse-grained elsewhere. Since the method was originally proposed ... [more ▼]

The quasicontinuum method is a concurrent multiscale approach in which lattice models are fully resolved in small regions of interest and coarse-grained elsewhere. Since the method was originally proposed to accelerate atomistic lattice simulations, its refinement criteria – that drive refining coarse-grained regions and/or increasing fully-resolved regions – are generally associated with quantities relevant to the atomistic scale. In this contribution, a new refinement indicator is presented, based on the energies of dedicated cells at coarse-grained domain surfaces. This indicator is incorporated in an adaptive scheme of a generalization of the quasicontinuum method able to consider periodic representative volume elements, like the ones employed in most computational homogenization approaches. However, this indicator can also be used for conventional quasicontinuum frameworks. Illustrative numerical examples of elastic indentation and scratch of different lattices demonstrate the capabilities of the refinement indicator and its impact on adaptive quasicontinuum simulations. [less ▲]

Generalized quasicontinuum modeling of metallic lattices with geometrical and material nonlinearity and variability

in Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering (2020), 366(112878),

We propose a generalized quasicontinuum method to model the mechanical response of 3D lattice structures. The method relies on the spatial coupling of fully-resolved domains and coarse-grained domains. In ... [more ▼]

We propose a generalized quasicontinuum method to model the mechanical response of 3D lattice structures. The method relies on the spatial coupling of fully-resolved domains and coarse-grained domains. In the fully-resolved domain, the full micro-structure is taken into account. In the coarse-grained domain, the kinematics of the micro-structure are individually interpolated based on their connectivity. On top of that, the contributions of the microstructure to the governing equations in the coarse-grained domain are sampled using only a few unit cells. In both domains, geometrical and material variability along the strut can be naturally taken into account using a 3D co-rotational beam finite element with embedded plastic hinges. We verify the approach for BCC lattices, demonstrating that the new method can capture both material and geometrical non-linearities of single struts at a fraction of the cost of a direct numerical simulation. [less ▲]

Equation-free multiscale modeling of metallic lattices with geometrical and material nonlinearity and variability

Scientific Conference (2019, September 05)

An nonlinear equation-free concurrent multiscale numerical framework, being the generalization of the quasicontinuum method [2] is proposed in this contribution to model 3D metallic lattice structures ... [more ▼]

An nonlinear equation-free concurrent multiscale numerical framework, being the generalization of the quasicontinuum method [2] is proposed in this contribution to model 3D metallic lattice structures. The proposed equation-free multiscale method (EFMM) relies on the use of fully-resolved domains (FRD) in which all of the details of the lattice micro-structure are captured, and of coarse-grained domains (CGD) in which a model reduction is performed by interpolation and summation steps. The particularity of the lattice geometry description is that cross section variations along the lattice struts (that are experimentally observed as a result of the manufacturing process) are explicitly represented by their discretization in several beam finite elements, both in the FRDs and CGDs. The interpolation step of the EFMM refers to a kinematic approximation of the lattice deformation within CGDs based on the movement of a reduced number of material points at the CGD corners. One of the originalities of this work is the consideration of a separate interpolation of each type of degrees of freedom within the CGDs, as a function of the connectivity of the lattice beam nodes (i.e. taking the location of different cross sections into account) and their kinematical pattern. This, together with accounting for plasticity, by the development and implementation of a 3D co-rotational beam finite element [1] with embedded plastic hinges [3], are unprecedented and original contributions. The EFMM is applied to metallic BCC lattices with various sizes and loading conditions. By comparing to direct numerical simulation (DNS), it is shown that both material and geometrical non-linearities can be captured at a fraction of the DNS cost (the computational time is reduced by 97.27% while introducing an error of only 3.76%). [less ▲]