Nicholas Fantuzzi

Four-parameter functionally graded cracked plates of arbitrary shape: A GDQFEM solution for free vibrations.

ABSTRACT The dynamic behavior of moderately thick FGM plates with geometric discontinuities and arbitrarily curved boundaries is investigated. The Generalized Differential Quadrature Finite Element Method (GDQFEM) is proposed as a numerical approach. The irregular physical domain in Cartesian coordinates is transformed into a regular domain in natural coordinates. Several types of cracked FGM plates are investigated. It appears that GDQFEM is analogous to the well-known Finite Element Method (FEM). With reference to the proposed technique the governing FSDT equations are solved in their strong form and the connections between the elements are imposed with the inter-element compatibility conditions. The results show excellent agreement with other numerical solutions obtained by FEM.

Analysis of Sandwich Plates by Generalized Differential Quadrature Method

We combine a layer-wise formulation and a generalized differential quadrature technique for predicting the static deformations and free vibration behaviour of sandwich plates. Through numerical experiments, the capability and efficiency of this strong-form technique for static and vibration problems are demonstrated, and the numerical accuracy and convergence are thoughtfully examined.

The strong formulation finite element method: stability and accuracy

The Strong Formulation Finite Element Method (SFEM) is a numerical solution technique for solving arbitrarily shaped structural systems. This method uses a hybrid scheme given by the Differential Quadrature Method (DQM) and the Finite Element Method (FEM). The SFEM takes the best from DQM and FEM giving a highly accurate strong formulation based technique with the adaptability of finite elements. The present study investigates the stability and accuracy of SFEM when applied to 1D and 2D structural components, such as rods, beams, membranes and plates using analytical and semi-analytical well-known solutions. The numerical results show that the present approach can be very accurate using a small number of grid points and elements, when it is compared to standard FEM.

Boundary conditions in 2D numerical and 3D exact models for cylindrical bending analysis of functionally graded structures

The cylindrical bending condition for structural models is very common in the literature because it allows an incisive and simple verification of the proposed plate and shell models. In the present paper, 2D numerical approaches (the Generalized Differential Quadrature (GDQ) and the finite element (FE) methods) are compared with an exact 3D shell solution in the case of free vibrations of functionally graded material (FGM) plates and shells. The first 18 vibration modes carried out through the 3D exact model are compared with the frequencies obtained via the 2D numerical models. All the 18 frequencies obtained via the 3D exact model are computed when the structures have simply supported boundary conditions for all the edges. If the same boundary conditions are used in the 2D numerical models, some modes are missed. Some of these missed modes can be obtained modifying the boundary conditions imposing free edges through the direction perpendicular to the direction of cylindrical bending. However, some modes cannot be calculated via the 2D numerical models even when the boundary conditions are modified because the cylindrical bending requirements cannot be imposed for numerical solutions in the curvilinear edges by definition. These features are investigated in the present paper for different geometries (plates, cylinders, and cylindrical shells), types of FGM law, lamination sequences, and thickness ratios.

New insights into the strong formulation finite element method for solving elastostatic and elastodynamic problems

Abstract This present paper has a complete and homogeneous presentation of plane stress and plane strain problems using the Strong Formulation Finite Element Method (SFEM). In particular, a greater emphasis is given to the numerical implementation of the governing and boundary conditions of the partial differential system of equations. The paper’s focus is on numerical stability and accuracy related to elastostatic and elastodynamic problems. In the engineering literature, results are mainly reported for isotropic and homogeneous structures. In this paper, a composite structure is investigated. The SFEM solution is compared to the ones obtained using commercial finite element codes. Generally, the SFEM observes fast accuracy and all the results are in very good agreement with the ones presented in literature.

Vibration analysis of multi-stepped and multi-damaged parabolic arches using GDQ

Abstract This paper investigates the in-plane free vibrations of multi-stepped and multi-damaged parabolic arches, for various boundary conditions. The axial extension, transverse shear deformation and rotatory inertia effects are taken into account. The constitutive equations relating the stress resultants to the corresponding deformation components refer to an isotropic and linear elastic material. Starting from the kinematic hypothesis for the in-plane displacement of the shear-deformable arch, the equations of motion are deduced by using Hamilton’s principle. Natural frequencies and mode shapes are computed using the Generalized Differential Quadrature (GDQ) method. The variable radius of curvature along the axis of the parabolic arch requires, compared to the circular arch, a more complex formulation and numerical implementation of the motion equations as well as the external and internal boundary conditions. Each damage is modelled as a combination of one rotational and two translational elastic springs. A parametric study is performed to illustrate the influence of the damage parameters on the natural frequencies of parabolic arches for different boundary conditions and cross-sections with localizeddamage.Results for the circular arch, derived from the proposed parabolic model with the derivatives of some parameters set to zero, agree well with those published over the past years.

Stress and Strain Recovery of Laminated Composite Doubly-Curved Shells and Panels Using Higher-Order Formulations

The present paper investigates the static behaviour of doubly-curved laminated composite shells and panels. A two dimensional Higher-order Equivalent Single Layer approach, based on the Carrera Unified Formulation (CUF), is proposed. The differential geometry is used for the geometric description of shells and panels. The numerical solution is calculated using the generalized differential quadrature method. The through-the-thickness strains and stresses are computed using a three dimensional stress recovery procedure based on the shell equilibrium equations. Sandwich panels are considered with soft cores. The numerical results are compared with the ones obtained with a finite element code. The proposed higher-order formulations can be used for solving elastic problems involved in the first stage of any scientific procedure of analysis and design of masonry structures.

Cracks Interaction Effect on the Dynamic Stability of Beams under Conservative and Nonconservative Forces

This study is an extension of the paper by E. Viola and A. Marzani [1] where the eigenfrequencies and critical loads of a single cracked beam subjected to conservative and nonconservative forceshave been investigated. Here the aim is to analyze the dynamic stability of T cross section beams withmultiple cracks. A doubly cracked Euler-Bernoulli beam subjected to triangularly distributed subtangential forces, which are the combination of axial and tangential forces, is considered. The governingequation of the system is derived via the extended Hamilton’s principle in which the kinetic energy, theelastic potential energy, the conservative work and the nonconservative work are taken into account. Thelocal flexibility matrix for a beam with T cross-section is used to model the cracked section. The resultsshow that for given boundary conditions cracked beams become unstable in the form of either flutter ordivergence depending on the crack parameters, the nonconservativeness of the applied load as well as theinteraction of the two cracks.

Linear Static Behavior of Damaged Laminated Composite Plates and Shells

A mathematical scheme is proposed here to model a damaged mechanical configuration for laminated and sandwich structures. In particular, two kinds of functions defined in the reference domain of plates and shells are introduced to weaken their mechanical properties in terms of engineering constants: a two-dimensional Gaussian function and an ellipse shaped function. By varying the geometric parameters of these distributions, several damaged configurations are analyzed and investigated through a set of parametric studies. The effect of a progressive damage is studied in terms of displacement profiles and through-the-thickness variations of stress, strain, and displacement components. To this end, a posteriori recovery procedure based on the three-dimensional equilibrium equations for shell structures in orthogonal curvilinear coordinates is introduced. The theoretical framework for the two-dimensional shell model is based on a unified formulation able to study and compare several Higher-order Shear Deformation Theories (HSDTs), including Murakami’s function for the so-called zig-zag effect. Thus, various higher-order models are used and compared also to investigate the differences which can arise from the choice of the order of the kinematic expansion. Their ability to deal with several damaged configurations is analyzed as well. The paper can be placed also in the field of numerical analysis, since the solution to the static problem at issue is achieved by means of the Generalized Differential Quadrature (GDQ) method, whose accuracy and stability are proven by a set of convergence analyses and by the comparison with the results obtained through a commercial finite element software.

On the Stress Intensity Factors of Cracked Beams for Structural Analysis

In this paper simple engineering methods for a fast and close approximation of stress intensity factors of cracked beams and bars, subjected to bending moment, normal and shear forces, as well as torque, are examined. As far as the circular cross section is concerned, comparisons are made on the base of numerical calculations. The agreement between the present results and those previously published is discussed. New formulae for calculating the stress intensity factors are proposed.