Brian Doran Giffin

Wind-borne debris is a significant contributor to structural damage during high-intensity wind events, but existing methods for estimating debris impact loads on structures are relatively limited. These limitations stem from inherent uncertainties and lack of knowledge regarding the characterization of combined wind and debris loads, as well as a lack of computational modeling strategies for representing wind-borne debris impacts and their effects on structures. In the present study, a physics-based fluid-structure-debris modeling framework coupled with OpenSees is developed to investigate and quantify of the extent to which wind-borne debris impact contributes to structural damage and collapse. Specific focus is placed on assessing the risk of structural collapse of electrical transmission towers subjected to tornadic winds. Within the proposed modeling framework, flying debris is represented through discrete realizations of debris trajectories and impacts, with the nonlinear transient dynamic behavior of the structure of interest modeled using OpenSees. Collisions between debris and the structure are resolved through a penalty-based contact enforcement strategy. A parametric vortex model is used to represent the wind field and to determine wind pressures acting on both the structure and the debris. As a particular application of the proposed methodology, damage and collapse fragility curves were developed for a representative lattice transmission tower using quoFEM, incorporating variability with respect to relevant structural, wind field, and debris loading parameters. The study presents findings which quantitatively compare the estimated risk of collapse when debris impact is included/excluded in the analysis to assess its relative importance.

In the classical theory of two-body contact, a single shared contact interface is con- sidered between two continuum bodies, and is further discretized as such in the finite element setting. In general, however, the finite element mesh topology of two contacting bodies will be non-conforming at this shared interface, requiring the definition of a preferred or intermediate surface over which integral constraints may be evaluated. The specification of this interface is deemed to be somewhat arbitrary, but in practice the numerical solution of contact problems may exhibit sensitivity to the particular choice of intermediate surface. A further complication concerns the need to establish projective mappings between the discretized finite element sur- faces and the chosen intermediate surface, particularly for the sake of evaluating the contact gap function between pairs of points on each of the two bodies. In this work, a new methodology for the enforcement of contact constraints in the context of finite element analyses is proposed. The method entails an alternative representation of contact surface integrals by equivalently integrating over the interstitial – albeit degenerate gap volume between two contacting bodies. An auxiliary indicator field is defined on each body, and is used to represent the degenerate interstitial volume as a non-degenerate hyper-dimensional gap volume. Over this domain, the gradient of the continuously interpolated displacement field with respect to the indicator field yields the oriented displacement gap, which may be used in the for- mulation of contact inequality constraints. Discretization of the hyper-dimensional gap volume into conforming finite elements is explored, and is observed to offer several advantages over existing contact discretization methods: the proposed method does not require the computation of geometric intersections or projections; it exploits conventional Gaussian quadrature schemes to integrate the hyper-dimensional gap integrals with a sufficient degree of accuracy; and may be naturally and efficiently extended to represent contact between higher-order surfaces. The efficacy of the method is demonstrated on several benchmark problems. Continuing and future work is also discussed, with a focus on intended applications and extensions of the method.

Abstract Accurate modeling of layered composite structures often requires the use of detailed finite element models which can sufficiently resolve the kinematics and material behavior within each layer of the composite. However, individually discretizing each material layer into finite elements presents a prohibitive computational expensive given the large number of thin layers comprising some laminated composites. To address these challenges, an 8-node layered solid hexahedral finite element is formulated with the aim of striking an appropriate balance between efficiency and fidelity. The element is discretized into an arbitrary number of distinct material layers, and employs reduced in-plane integration within each layer. The chosen reduced integration scheme is supplemented by a novel physical stabilization approach which includes layerwise enhancements to mitigate various forms of locking phenomena. The proposed framework additionally supports the inclusion of interlaminar enhanced displacements to better represent the kinematics of general layered composite materials. The described element formulation has been implemented in the ParaDyn finite element code, and its efficacy for modeling laminated composite structures is demonstrated on a variety of verification problems.

A generic smeared crack modeling framework predicated on the deformation gradient decomposition (DGD) approach is proposed for use in dynamic fracture problems at finite strains, accommodating failure along multiple mutually orthogonal fracture planes embedded within an independently defined bulk material model. Within this constitutive framework, the traction equilibrium conditions imposed at each failure surface are used to determine the associated crack displacements stored as internal state variables. In general, the enforcement of interfacial equilibrium entails the implicit solution of a non-linear system of equations within the constitutive update procedure. However, if inertial effects arising due to the relative motion of the fractured material are incorporated within the model, the traction equilibrium conditions are shown to give rise to corresponding dynamic equations of motion governing the time-evolution of the crack opening displacements. For dynamic problems, an explicit time-integration procedure is devised to efficiently update the material state, subject to a set of internal frictionless contact constraints to prevent material inversion. The efficacy of the proposed modeling framework is investigated through several benchmark dynamic fracture problems run within the explicit finite element code DYNA3D.