Sharif Digital Repository

In this paper, an automated adaptive remeshing procedure is presented for simulation of arbitrary shape crack growth in multiple cracked bodies. The Zienkiewicz-Zhu error estimator is employed in conjunction with the modified superconvergent patch recovery (SPR) technique to obtain more accurate estimation of error. A stability analysis is performed to determine active cracks from a set of competitive cracks. Various crack growth criteria together with the respective crack trajectory prediction are compared. Several numerical examples are illustrated to demonstrate the efficiency, robustness and accuracy of computational algorithm in the simulation of multiple crack growth  

The biped walking robot demonstrates a stable limit cycle on shallow slopes. In previous researches, this passive gait was shown to be sensitive to ground slope and initial conditions. In this paper, we discuss the feedback stabilization of a biped robot by the "energy shaping" technique. Two designs are proposed to reduce the sensitivity of the biped walking robot to slope and initial conditions. In the first design, a moving mass actuator is located on each link of the robot. The actuators are used to shape the potential energy of the biped robot so that it tracks the potential energy of a known passive gait of a similar biped robot on a different slope. Although the method is applied to a... 

One of the important challenges in the auto industry is to reduce the mass of the vehicle while meeting structural performance requirements for Crashworthiness, Noise, Vibration and Harshness (NVH) etc. In this paper, a multidisciplinary optimization (MDO) of a car back-bonnet is investigated by using trie Response Surface Method (RSM). Firstly, a car body is fully surface modeled in CATIA and meshed in HYPERMESH software. Then, modal analysis of the finite element model is performed by NASTRAN software to find natural frequencies. Frequency map of that component is extracted and compared with a reference map to detect defects. Design of Experiments (DOE) methodologies is used for a... 

Vibration analysis of simply supported rotating cross-ply laminated stiffened cylindrical shell is performed using an energy approach which includes variational and averaging method. The stiffeners include rings and stringers. The equations are obtained by Rayleigh-Ritz method and Sander's relations. To validate the present method, the results are compared to the results available in other literatures. A good adoption is observed in different type of results including isotropic shells, rotating laminated shells, stiffened isotropic shells and stiffened laminated shells. Then, the optimization of parameters due to shell and stiffeners is conducted by genetic algorithm (GA) method under weight... 

In the present paper, an optimization of thermal barrier coating parameters is performed for diesel engine applications. The substrate is A356.0-T7, a cast aluminum alloy which has a vast application in diesel engines, and the alloy is coated by plasma sprayed ZrO2-8 wt.% Y2O3. Parameters including the feed rate of coating powders, the nozzle distance to specimen surfaces, and the coating thickness are optimized by thermal shock fatigue tests and bending tests. Optimum values of the feed rate and the nozzle distance are 30 g/min and 80 mm, respectively, when the objective is considered as maximizing the bending strength. Thermal shock tests demonstrate that lower thickness of coating layers... 

Ceramic thermal barrier coatings are applied on gas turbines and diesel engine components to protect metals from heat and this enhances the service lifetime by means of a reduction in working temperature. In the present paper, optimisation of plasma thermal spray parameters, including feed rate and nozzle distance from the specimen surface is performed by using the design of experiment method. Due to factorial approach, by considering two parameters with three variation levels, nine experiments of bending test are needed. The base material is cast aluminium alloy, A356.0-T7. The coating layers consist of a bond coat, Ni-Cr-Al-Y with a thickness of 150 μm and a top coat, ZrO2-8wt%Y2O3 with a... 

In this research, the effect of surface characteristics on boiling heat transfer has been investigated experimentally. For this purpose, a device with the ability to automatically record the liquid temperature of the inlet and outlet of the test area, calculate the coefficient of boiling heat transfer, and heat flux has been developed. The automatic temperature stability of the working fluid and the ability to investigate the effect of surfaces with different characteristics (in terms of material and surface structure) on the boiling heat transfer parameters are the most important features of this device. The performance of the experimental setup was evaluated by the modified "Chen" equation... 

This paper presents a finite element method (FEM) free and forced lateral vibration analysis of beams made of functionally graded materials (FGMs). The temperature dependency of material properties along with damping had not previously been taken into account in vibration analysis. In the present study, the material properties were assumed to be temperature-dependent, and were graded in the thickness direction according to a simple power law distribution of the volume fractions of the constituents. The natural frequencies were obtained for functionally graded (FG) beams with various boundary conditions. First, an FG beam was assumed to be isotropic (metal rich) and the results were compared... 

In this paper, effects of strain rate and mean strain on the cyclic behavior and the lifetime of aluminum-silicon alloys are investigated under thermo-mechanical and isothermal fatigue loadings. To achieve these goals, low cycle fatigue tests are accomplished at evaluated temperatures under various strain rates (by changing the loading frequency) and different strain ratios (minimum to maximum strain). Thermo-mechanical fatigue experiments are performed in an out-of-phase condition where the temperature varies between 50 and 250 °C. Various heating/cooling rates are taken into account to assess the strain rate effect and different starting temperatures are considered to study the mean strain... 

This article presents a failure analysis on a gasoline engine cylinder head made of aluminum alloy, which has been used in passenger cars. During an endurance test, a crack initiated from the interior wall of a hole in the center of the cylinder head and then propagated through the thickness of the cylinder head. The metallurgical examinations are conducted in the crack origin zone. The results show that there are many casting pores due to poor quality of casting in the failed cylinder head which has certainly played a crucial role in initiating the crack. Finite element analysis of the cylinder head is performed to identify the stress components. Modeling of a bolt for the hole shows that... 

In this article, numerical simulations of cyclic behaviors in light alloys are conducted under isothermal and thermo-mechanical fatigue loadings. For this purpose, an aluminum alloy (A356) which is widely used in cylinder heads and a magnesium alloy (AZ91) which can be applicable in cylinder heads are considered to study their stress-strain hysteresis loops. Two plasticity approaches including the Chaboche's hardening model and the Nagode's spring-slider model are applied to simulate cyclic behaviors. To validate obtained results, strain-controlled fatigue tests are performed under low cycle and thermo-mechanical fatigue loadings. Numerical results demonstrate a good agreement with... 

This paper incorporates a discrete wavelet transform and a radial basis function neural network to implement a vibration-based crack-like damage identification approach to the simulated welds of chassis cross members. After finite element method modelling of a vehicle, eight acceleration sensors are placed on the chassis, and their responses are measured to the upward displacement on the excitation of two tyres while the other two tyres are fixed. Then, a discrete wavelet transform with a Daubechies 3 mother wavelet is applied to the responses of the sensors. All detail coefficients and approximation coefficients of the nine levels of the discrete wavelet transform are introduced into the... 

In this paper, the three-dimensional automatic adaptive mesh refinement is presented in modeling the crack propagation based on the modified superconvergent patch recovery technique. The technique is developed for the mixed mode fracture analysis of different fracture specimens. The stress intensity factors are calculated at the crack tip region and the crack propagation is determined by applying a proper crack growth criterion. An automatic adaptive mesh refinement is employed on the basis of modified superconvergent patch recovery (MSPR) technique to simulate the crack growth by applying the asymptotic crack tip solution and using the collapsed quarter-point singular tetrahedral elements... 

In this paper, the crack propagation in ductile materials is simulated under cyclic and dynamic loading. The adaptive finite element method is used to model the discontinuity due to crack propagation. The ductile fracture assumptions and continuum damage mechanics are utilized to model the material rupture behavior. Moreover both the rate-independent and rate-dependent constitutive equations are elaborated and the crack closure effect and combined hardening model are discussed in addition to some aspects of finite element implementation. Finally, a comparison is performed between the numerical simulation results and those of experiments to illustrate the robustness of proposed computational... 

Wettability alteration of rock surfaces toward gas wetting have been recognized as a practical approach for maximizing the production from the gas condensate reservoirs. Most of the reported work in this area applied the so called sessile drop contact angle measurement technique to examine the change in wetting state of a surface. However, the size-dependent wetting behavior of drop which could affect the exact determination of wettability and wettability changes was not well discussed in the previous studies. Therefore, in this work, the size dependency of contact angle for four different liquid-solid-gas systems; i.e., water-calcite-air, water-treated calcite-air (nanofluid treated... 

Dynamic contact angle measurement; as a standard method for surface wettability analysis, is usually conducted through the analysis of sessile drops formed following the low rate injection of fluid from beneath through a drilled hole via an injection needle. However, understanding/characterizing the changes of drop contact angle from the point where the flat solid surface begins is not well discussed yet. Moreover, during the evaluation of size-dependent behavior of contact angle of millimeter-scale drops, the effect of the drilled hole is ignored. In this regard, in the current study, the experimental and thermodynamic characterizations of the sessile drop advancing contact angle... 

Coral reefs around the discharge areas of desalination plants have effects on the distribution and dilution of discharged saline jet. In the present study, effects of bed obstacles with different heights on the behaviour of inclined negatively buoyant jets (INBJs), including dilution and spatial characteristics, are experimentally investigated using the light attenuation (LA) optical method. Present experiments show that as the confinement induced by the bed and obstacle intensifies, the maximum normalized jet centreline dilution decreases up to 40%. As the jet approaches the obstacle, spreading along the inner and outer edges of the jet increases. The present results also show that upstream... 

An algorithm for investigation of nonlinear systems by the transfinite element method is presented. Basically, the transformation techniques have been developed for linear systems. Nonlinear transient heat transfer of a thick FGM cylinder with temperature-dependent material properties is investigated in the present paper to clarify the proposed algorithm. Two main novelties of the present research are: (1) incorporating the temperature-dependency of the material properties in the thermal analysis which lead to highly non-linear governing equations and (2) proposing an updating numerical transfinite element procedure to solve the resulted highly nonlinear governing equations. To reduce the... 

In this paper, nonlinear radial and hoop thermoelastic stress analysis of rotating disk made of functionally graded material (FGM) with variable thickness is carried out by using the finite element method. In this method, one-dimensional second order elements with three nodes have been used. The geometrical and boundary conditions are in the shape of nonexistence of the pressure (zero radial stress) in both external and internal layers and zero displacement at the internal layer of rotating disk. Furthermore, it's assumed that heat distribution is as second order curve while material properties such as elasticity modulus, Poisson's ratio and thermal expansion coefficient vary by using a... 

In the present paper, fatigue analysis of an antiroll bar is investigated and compared for several criterions by using the finite element method (FEM) and also the experimental results. The validity of some of commonly used criterions in estimating fatigue life including Mcdiarmid and Von Misses theories is examined in which the inputs are considered as periodic data. For random inputs, some other methods are proposed including new suggestions and also a new criterion are established for estimation of fatigue life based on Mcdiarmid and Von Misses criterions. Prediction capability of mentioned new criterion which is evaluated for the antiroll bar, shows better results than other methods...