Reducing the Mesh-burden and Computational Expense in Multi-scale Free Boundary Engineering Problems

We present recent results aiming at affording faster and error-controlled simulations of multi scale phenomena including fracture of heterogeneous materials and cutting of biological tissue. In a second part, we describe methodologies to isolate the user from the burden of mesh generation and regeneration as moving boundaries evolve.
Results include advances in implicit boundary finite elements, (enriched) isogeometric boundary elements and extended finite element methods for multi-crack propagation.
ABOUT THE PRESENTER
In 1999, Stéphane Bordas joined a joint graduate programme of the French Institute of Technology (Ecole Spéciale des Travaux Publics) and the American Northwestern University. In 2003, he graduated in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics with a PhD from Northwestern University. Between 2003 and 2006, he was at the Laboratory of Structural and Continuum Mechanics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland. In 2006, he became permanent lecturer at Glasgow University’s Civil Engineering Department. Stéphane joined the Computational Mechanics team at Cardiff University in September 2009, as a Professor in Computational Mechanics and directed the institute of Mechanics and Advanced Materials from October 2010 to November 2013. He is the Editor of the book series “Advances in Applied Mechanics” since July 2013. In November 2013, he joined the University of Luxembourg as a Professor in Computational Mechanics. The main axes of his research team include (1) free boundary problems and problems involving complex geometries, in particular moving boundaries and (2) ‘a posteriori’ discretisation and model error control, rationalisation of the computational expense. Stéphane’s keen interest is to actively participate in innovation, technological transfer as well as software tool generation. This has been done through a number of joint ventures with various industrial partners (Bosch GmbH, Cenaero, inuTech GmbH, Siemens-LMS, Soitec SA) and the release of open-source software. In 2012, Stéphane was awarded an ERC Starting Independent Research Grant (RealTcut), to address the need for surgical simulators with a computational mechanics angle with a focus on the multi-scale simulation of cutting of heterogeneous materials in real-time.