Project Title:
Highly Accurate, Adaptive Techniques for Damage Modeling and Life Prediction of Aerospace
11.08-0618
911939
Highly Accurate, Adaptive Techniques for Damage Modeling and Life Prediction of Aerospace
Structures
Computational Mechanics Company, Inc.
7701 North Lamar, Suite 200
Austin
TX
78752
W. Wojtek
Tworzydlo
512-467-0618
MSFC
NAS8-39311
229
11.08-0618
911939
Abstract:
Highly Accurate, Adaptive Techniques for Damage Modeling and Life Prediction of Aerospace
Structures
In the design of components of aerospace structures, such as Space Shuttle Main Engine,
reliability considerations and life prediction are extremely important. There are
several damage and fatigue theories designed to estimate reliability and life span
of aerospace materials. The objective of this project is to combine these theories
with adaptive finite-element methods in order to create a reliable and computationally
efficient tool for the design of aerospace structures. Adaptive finite-element methods,
based on rigorous error estimates, automatically adjust the structure of the computational
mesh to provide the best solution at minimum computational cost. In practical applications
this enables very large simulations to be conducted with a minimal number of degrees
of freedom. The focus of this project is to couple adaptive methodologies with continuum
damage theories and nonlinear constitutive material models in a three-dimensional
finite-element code for predicting micro-crack nucleation and growth, and ultimate
life expectancy for geometrically complex bodies subjected to complex time-dependent
loadings. This code will be designed in a modular format to allow easy implementation
and testing of constitutive theories and damage models. The final product will be
a computational tool which functions on unstructured meshes and provides numerical
results with a quantifiable level of accuracy and reliability.
Advanced finite-element analysis of structural components with damage and fatigue
modeling will be applicable not only to NASA's development of aerospace vehicles,
but also in general engineering analysis of critical machine elements operating at
high stress levels.
adaptive finite-element, damage, life prediction, fatigue, crack