分类： 2015

One of the major goals of isogeometric analysis is direct design-to-analysis, i.e., using computer-aided design (CAD) files for analysis without the need for mesh generation. One of the primary obstacles to achieving this goal is CAD models are based on surfaces, and not volumes. The boundary element method (BEM) circumvents this difficulty by directly working with the surfaces. The standard basis functions in CAD are trimmed nonuniform rational B-spline (NURBS). NURBS patches are the tensor product of one-dimensional NURBS, making the construction of arbitrary surfaces difficult. Trimmed NURBS use curves to trim away regions of the patch to obtain the desired shape. By coupling trimmed NURBS with a nonsingular BEM, the formulation proposed here comes close achieving the goal of direct design to analysis. Example calculations demonstrate its efficiency and accuracy.

A multi-patch nonsingular isogeometric boundary element method (IGABEM) for 3D problems is presented that provides accurate solutions for multi-patch IGABEM. In order to conveniently implement this method, based on the Greville abscissae, a new collocation method moves the first and the last collocation points of each parametric direction inside of their patches, and a simple method for merging equations handles the extra equations. The numerical results verify the accuracy and efficiency of the present method by comparing it to the conventional IGABEM.

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to present a novel strategy used for acceleration of free-vibration analysis, in which the hierarchical matrices structure and Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) platform is applied to improve the performance of the traditional dual reciprocity boundary element method (DRBEM).

Design/methodology/approach

– The DRBEM is applied in forming integral equation to reduce complexity. In the procedure of optimization computation, ℋ-Matrices are introduced by applying adaptive cross-approximation method. At the same time, this paper proposes a high-efficiency parallel algorithm using CUDA and the counterpart of the serial effective algorithm in ℋ-Matrices for inverse arithmetic operation.

Findings

– The analysis for free-vibration could achieve impressive time and space efficiency by introducing hierarchical matrices technique. Although the serial algorithm based on ℋ-Matrices could obtain fair performance for complex inversion operation, the CUDA parallel algorithm would further double the efficiency. Without much loss in accuracy according to the examination of the numerical example, the relative error appeared in approximation process can be fixed by increasing degrees of freedoms or introducing certain amount of internal points.

Originality/value

– The paper proposes a novel effective strategy to improve computational efficiency and decrease memory consumption of free-vibration problems. ℋ-Matrices structure and parallel operation based on CUDA are introduced in traditional DRBEM.

Currently, there are still some big gaps between the CAD system and CAE system, e.g. the different data structure for model representation, which costs lots of time and effort of engineers in the interaction between these two kinds of systems. In order to bridge these gaps, an incorporate software framework is proposed in this paper. In this framework, the unified representation architecture (URA) is presented that makes CAD and CAE to be an organic entity. The URA contains three components: (1) unified data model (UDD) including unified B-rep, unified feature and unified mesh; (2) unified data management (UDM) consisting of unified interaction, unified data structure, unified Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) history and unified interface; (3) unified display and post-processor (UDP) for both design and performance analysis. The URA facilitates the incorporation by explicitly representing design and analysis information as design features, which maintains their associations through the history chain. Besides the URA, a unified mesh data (UMD) is proposed to unify the mesh of CAD model display and CAE analysis with the purpose of reducing the redundancy of mesh data. The unified mesh data (UMD) is proposed to unify the mesh of CAD model display and CAE analysis, which greatly reduces the redundancy of mesh generation data. Finally, the high efficiency of the proposed framework is demonstrated by engineering examples.

A boundary condition (BC) related mixed element method is presented to address the corner problem in boundary element method (BEM) for 3D elastostatic problems. In this method, noncontinuous elements (NCEs) are only used at the displacement-prescribed corners/edges and continuous elements (CEs) in other places, which can decrease the degrees of freedom (DOFs) compared to the approach using NCEs at all corners/edges. Moreover, an automatic generation algorithm of BC related mixed linear triangular elements is implemented with the help of 3D modeling engine ACIS, and the boundary element analysis (BEA) is integrated into CAD systems. In order to solve large scale problems, the fast multipole BEM (FMBEM) with mixed elements is proposed and utilized in the BEA. The examples show that the node shift scheme adopting 1/4 is optimal and the BEM/FMBEM using mixed elements can produce more accurate results by only increasing a small number of DOFs.