Detailed structural analysis for fiber-reinforced polymer with singularities via FETI domain decomposition

Abstract

The conventional representative volume element approach may not be accurate enough in examining stress distribution near singularity in a composite. However, enormous number of degrees of freedom (DOFs) is usually required to discretize the subcomponents within the composite structure; hence, it may not be handled in a single CPU. In this study, the finite element tearing and interconnecting algorithm, a domain decomposition method, is proposed to address the challenges posed by such enormous number of DOFs via parallel computation. Owing to the message passing interface, analyses in this study will be conducted on the parallel computing environment. Furthermore, the METIS algorithm is adopted to automatically divide the solid domain into certain number of subdomains. Consequently, the fiber-reinforced polymer which possesses either a crack or notch discretized by over 10 million DOFs will be readily analyzed. The computational time is reduced significantly compared against the original one. Also, the stress and stiffness predictions show good agreement with those by the other existing analyses or experiments. Therefore, this study is expected to be fast and accurate in analyzing composite structures with enormous number of DOFs.