The main contribution of the present work is the proposition of a framework for analysis of active suspensions using the Caenorhabditis elegans nematode as the living model. To do so, five different perspectives are used: kinematics, macro-reological, numerical, theoretical and micro-reological. First, a theoretical and experimental analysis of the kinematic motion of the nematodes suspended in a biological fluid is presented. Two different populations are examined: starving and well fed nematodes. We show that the relationship between the length of an individual nematode and the wavelength of its movement is linear and can be adjusted by a theoretical prediction proposed in this work. A deep discussion on propulsive mechanics based on a scale analysis that identifies three major forces acting on an individual nematode is made. In addition, we investigated the shear viscosity of Caenorhabditis elegans suspensions. The oscillatory shear experiments revealed an anomalous viscosity behavior with the variation of the volumetric fraction of suspension, ?. The effective viscosity of the suspension decreased with increasing nematode volumetric fraction at low concentrations. Based on the experimental data, a phenomenological equation for the effective viscosity of the suspension as a function of the volumetric fraction of particles is proposed. The collective behavior of the nematodes is also observed in linear regime through the difference of normal stresses. Finally, step strain tests are conducted to obtain the relaxation times. The presence of a negative active stress due to the nematoid driving behavior persists for a period of time, leading to a negative undershoot and an oscillatory behavior in the relaxation function. In order to propose a rheological model, simplifications are made in the model and immersed boundary method simulations are conducted in a flexible filament, varying the type of movement that it performs. It is observed that the presence of asymmetries in its undulating movement generates drastic changes on its kinematic responses. A rheological model as a function of filament orientation is proposed and validated with experimental data in linear regime. After validation of the proposed constitutive equation, the model is observed under the nonlinear regime of oscillatory shear, in which the rheological characterizations are made based on existing frameworks using Lissajous-Bowditch curves and Pipkin diagrams. Finally, a protocol for analysis of suspensions in a microrheometer is presented. Particles are added and tracked as unidirectional oscillatory shear (pulsatile flow) is applied. The velocity and shear rate profiles are obtained, as well as the rheological signals equivalent to the strain rate and stress. Signal analysis tools are used and an artificial intelligence system is proposed to remove the component added to the signal by unidirectional shear, aiming to reconstruct the signal with null temporal average and allowing the application of well known rheological theories, such as the decomposition of stresses in coefficients of Chebyshev, for the calculation of viscommetric quantities of compliances and fluidities. The major contribution of the study concerns the observation, characterization, modeling and simulation of a microsized animal that moves in different fashion, depending on the environment, and the surrounding fluid. The rheological properties analyzed, simuations performed and model proposed can be used for both production of artifitial microorganisms and control of living organisms. Moreover, this combination of analyses and techniques can be used to study any type of passive and active suspension providing new and conclusive results regarding the rheological characterization and the physical behavior of the particles. / A principal contribuição do presente trabalho é a proposição de um framework de análise de suspensões ativas utilizando como modelo vivo o nematoide Caenorhabditis elegans. Para tanto, cinco perspectivas diferentes são utilizadas: cinemática, macrorreológica, numérica, teórica e microrreológica. Primeiramente, uma análise teórica e experimental do movimento cinemático das partículas ativas suspensas em um fluido biológico é apresentada. Duas populações diferentes são examinadas: na ausência de alimento e com nematoides bem alimentados. Mostramos que a relação entre o comprimento de um nematoide individual e o comprimento de onda de seu movimento é linear e pode ser ajustada por uma previsão teórica proposta neste trabalho. Uma profunda discussão sobre a mecânica de propulsão com base em uma análise de escala que identifica três forças principais que atuam em um nematoide individual é feita. Além disso, investigamos a viscosidade de cisalhamento das suspensões de Caenorhabditis elegans. Os experimentos em cisalhamento oscilatório revelaram um comportamento anômalo da viscosidade com a variação da fração volumétrica de suspensão, ?. A viscosidade efetiva da suspensão diminuiu com o aumento da fração volumétrica do nematoide para pequenas concentrações. Baseando-se nos dados experimentais, uma equação fenomenológica para a viscosidade efetiva da suspensão em função da fração volumétrica de partículas é proposta. O comportamento coletivo dos nematoides é também observado, em regime linear, pela diferença de tensões normais. Finalmente, o teste de step strain é conduzido para obter os tempos de relaxação. A presença de uma tensão ativa negativa devido ao comportamento impulsor do nematoide persiste por um certo período, levando a um undershoot negativo e a um comportamento oscilatório na função de relaxação. A fim de propor um modelo reológico, simplificações são efetuadas no modelo e simulações usando o método de fronteira imersa são conduzidas em um filamento flexível, variando o tipo de movimento que este realiza. Observa-se que a presença de assimetrias em seu movimento ondulatório gera drásticas mudanças em suas respostas cinemáticas. Um modelo reológico em função da orientação do filamento é proposto e validado com os dados experimentais em regime linear. Após a validação da equação constitutiva proposta, o modelo é observado sob o regime não-linear do cisalhamento oscilatório, no qual as caracterizações reológicas são feitas com base nos frameworks existentes, utilizando curvas de Lissajous-Bowditch e diagramas de Pipkin. Por fim, é apresentado um protocolo de análise de suspensões em um microrreômetro. Partículas são adicionadas e rastreadas à medida que um cisalhamento unidirecional (escoamento pulsátil) é aplicado. Os perfis de velocidade e taxa de cisalhamento são obtidos, assim como os sinais reológicos equivalentes à taxa de deformação e tensão. Ferramentas de análise de sinais são utilizadas e um sistema de inteligência artificial é proposto para remoção da componente constante do sinal adicionada pelo cisalhamento unidirecional, visando reconstruir o sinal com média temporal nula e possibilitando a aplicação de teorias reológicas já conhecidas, como a decomposição de tensões em coeficientes de Chebyshev para o cálculo das quantidades viscométricas de conformidade e fluidez. A principal contribuição do estudo diz respeito à observação, caracterização, modelagem e simulação de um animal microscópico que se movimenta de maneira diferente dependendo do ambiente e do fluido circundante. As propriedades reológicas analisadas, as simulações realizadas e o modelo proposto podem ser utilizados tanto para a produção de microorganismos artificiais quanto para o controle de organismos vivos. Além disso, essa combinação de análises e técnicas pode ser usada para estudo de qualquer tipo de suspensão ativa e passiva, fornecendo resultados novos e conclusivos em relação à caracterização reológica e ao comportamento físico das partículas.

The ultimate goal of this research is to develop the capability of direct numerical simulation of a flow containing numerous rigid finite size particles. In order to reach this goal, we have implemented the smoothed profile method (SPM) in the University of Iowa in-house solver, pELAFINT3D and overcame several challenges related to the method. This includes a proposed formulation for the interface thickness and many validations and comparisons with experimental data as well as with a second-order accurate sharp interface method. As one of the issues related to low-density particles is the instability, SPM has been improved by developing to a fully implicit scheme. Moreover, use of higher order integration formulation and implementation of Euler parameters have been shown to be helpful in stabilization of the calculations. To preserve the efficiency when the number of the particles increases, local mesh refinement is shown to be a very effective tool. A revised version of SPM that has only one projection step is proposed to improve the efficiency of the method. A comprehensive efficiency study is performed and it has been shown that the new method is less expensive in problems with high added mass effect when strongly coupled fluid-structure interaction schemes are used. Moreover, the code is massively parallelized using MPI and PETSc libraries. The parallelization includes I/O, operations leading to construction of the linear solver as well as the solver itself. Simulation of a particle laden flow involves particles collisions. Two novel collision models are suggested which are able to avoid particle overlapping for arbitrary shape particles. The methods are efficient as they are not involved with extra grid refinement related to implementing lubrication forces. The issue of handling continuously changing number of particles in a particle laden flow is solved by implementation of a linked list data structure for the particles. By studying a flow over a constricted region we showed that the platelets’ activation is more likely to happen for the particles that pass from the middle of the upper bump region because those particles will have longer exposure time to the high shear flow behind the bump. PDF contour of particles’ presence show the more concentrated presence of the particles near the bump. Moreover, the interaction of RBCs and platelets pushes the platelets toward the wall after the bottom wall.

This thesis presents an automatic animation system for jellyfish that is based on a physical simulation of the organism and its surrounding fluid. Our goal is to explore the unusual style of locomotion, namely jet propulsion, which is utilized by jellyfish. The organism achieves this propulsion by contracting its body, expelling water, and propelling itself forward. The organism then expands again to refill itself with water for a subsequent stroke. We endeavor to model the thrust achieved by the jellyfish, and also the evolution of the organism's geometric configuration. <p> We restrict our discussion of locomotion to fully grown adult jellyfish, and we restrict our study of locomotion to the resonant gait, which is the organism's most active mode of locomotion, and is characterized by a regular contraction rate that is near one of the creature's resonant frequencies. We also consider only species that are axially symmetric, and thus are able to reduce the dimensionality of our model. We can approximate the full 3D geometry of a jellyfish by simulating a 2D slice of the organism. This model reduction yields plausible results at a lower computational cost. From the 2D simulation, we extrapolate to a full 3D model. To prevent our extrapolated model from being artificially smooth, we give the final shape more variation by adding noise to the 3D geometry. This noise is inspired by empirical data of real jellyfish, and also by work with continuous noise functions from the graphics community. <p> Our 2D simulations are done numerically with ideas from the field of computational fluid dynamics. Specifically, we simulate the elastic volume of the jellyfish with a spring-mass system, and we simulate the surrounding fluid using the semi-Lagrangian method. To couple the particle-based elastic representation with the grid-based fluid representation, we use the immersed boundary method. We find this combination of methods to be a very efficient means of simulating the 2D slice with a minimal compromise in physical accuracy.

This thesis presents an automatic animation system for jellyfish that is based on a physical simulation of the organism and its surrounding fluid. Our goal is to explore the unusual style of locomotion, namely jet propulsion, which is utilized by jellyfish. The organism achieves this propulsion by contracting its body, expelling water, and propelling itself forward. The organism then expands again to refill itself with water for a subsequent stroke. We endeavor to model the thrust achieved by the jellyfish, and also the evolution of the organism's geometric configuration. <p> We restrict our discussion of locomotion to fully grown adult jellyfish, and we restrict our study of locomotion to the resonant gait, which is the organism's most active mode of locomotion, and is characterized by a regular contraction rate that is near one of the creature's resonant frequencies. We also consider only species that are axially symmetric, and thus are able to reduce the dimensionality of our model. We can approximate the full 3D geometry of a jellyfish by simulating a 2D slice of the organism. This model reduction yields plausible results at a lower computational cost. From the 2D simulation, we extrapolate to a full 3D model. To prevent our extrapolated model from being artificially smooth, we give the final shape more variation by adding noise to the 3D geometry. This noise is inspired by empirical data of real jellyfish, and also by work with continuous noise functions from the graphics community. <p> Our 2D simulations are done numerically with ideas from the field of computational fluid dynamics. Specifically, we simulate the elastic volume of the jellyfish with a spring-mass system, and we simulate the surrounding fluid using the semi-Lagrangian method. To couple the particle-based elastic representation with the grid-based fluid representation, we use the immersed boundary method. We find this combination of methods to be a very efficient means of simulating the 2D slice with a minimal compromise in physical accuracy.

Fluid-structure interaction (FSI) is an important physical phenomenon in many applications and across various disciplines including aerospace, civil and bio-engineering. In civil engineering, applications include the design of wind turbines, pipelines, suspension bridges and offshore platforms. Ocean structures such as drilling risers, mooring lines, cables, undersea piping and tension-leg platforms can be subject to strong ocean currents, and such structures may suffer from Vortex-Induced Vibrations (VIV's), where vortex shedding of the flow interacts with the structural properties, leading to large amplitude vibrations in both in-line and cross-flow directions. Over the past years, many experimental and numerical studies have been conducted to comprehend the underlying physical mechanisms. However, to date there is still limited understanding of the effect of oscillatory interactions between fluid flow and structural behavior though such interactions can cause large deformations. This research proposes a mathematical framework to accurately predict FSI for elastically supported rigid structures. The numerical method developed solves the Navier-Stokes (NS) equations for the fluid and the Equation of Motion (EOM) for the structure. The proposed method employs Finite Differences (FD) on Cartesian grids together with an improved, efficient and oscillation-free Immersed Boundary Method (IBM), the accuracy of which is verified for several test cases of increasing complexity. A variety of two and three dimensional FSI simulations are performed to demonstrate the accuracy and applicability of the method. In particular, forced and a free vibration of a rigid cylinder including Vortex-Induced Vibration (VIV) of an elastically supported cylinder are presented and compared with reference simulations and experiments. Then, the interference between two cylinders in tandem arrangement at two different spacing is investigated. In terms of VIV, three different scenarios were studied for each cylinder arrangement to compare resonance regime to a single cylinder. Finally, the IBM is implemented into a three-dimensional Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) method and two high Reynolds number (Re) flows are studied for a stationary and transversely oscillating cylinder. The robustness, accuracy and applicability of the method for high Re number flow is demonstrated by comparing the turbulence statistics of the two cases and discussing differences in the mean and instantaneous flows.

Resumo: A compreensão do escoamento em válvulas de compressores herméticos alternativos é de fundamental importância para introduzir modificações no projeto delas de maneira a aumentar a performance dos compressores, e por fim, dos ciclos de refrigeração. A válvula do compressor é um dispositivo ímpar, umas vez que seu funcionamento se dá pela ação da pressão exercida pelo escoamento, caracterizando um problema de forte interação fluido- estrutura. O uso da modelagem numérica através das ferramentas da mecânica dos fluidos computacional (CFD) tem se destacado como a alternativa mais dinâmica para o estudo do fenômeno. O trabalho desenvolvido foi voltado para o estudo numérico do escoamento através do difusor radial, o qual é um modelo simplificado da válvula, com o emprego do Método da Fronteira Imersa com Modelo Físico Virtual para a modelagem do disco superior do difusor (palheta). O ponto forte desta metodologia é que a representação de regiões sólidas é feita pelo cálculo de um campo de força, o qual é introduzido nas equações das células na vizinhança do sólido. Este procedimento dispensa o uso de malhas que se adaptam ao corpo, possibilitando o uso de malhas cartesianas convencionas para modelar geometrias complexas e móveis. A metodologia foi acoplada com a solução das equações governantes do escoamento em coordenadas cilíndricas através do Método dos Volumes Finitos. Inicialmente, a metodologia foi validada, utilizando como dados de referência resultados provenientes de estudos numéricos e experimentais, e foi avaliada a influência dos parâmetros do procedimento na qualidade final dos resultados. Na segunda etapa foram desenvolvidos estudos preliminares referentes ao movimento do disco superior, com a imposição artificial dos processos de abertura e fechamento da válvula. Os resultados obtidos mostraram que a metodologia adotada ... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: The fully understanding of the flow through automatic valves of alternative hermetic compressors is essentiall to introduce modifications in its project aiming the improvement of the compressor performance and, also, the refrigeration cycle. The compressor valve is a singular device, once its operation is ruled by the flow pressure, characterizing a case with a strong fluid-structure interaction. The using of numerical tools trough the methods of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has gained especial attention due to its flexibility to study the phenomenon. The present work was developed to study numerically the flow through the radial diffuser, which is a simplified model of the valve, with the employment of the Immersed Boundary Method with Virtual Physical Model to modeling the superior disk (valve reed). The main advantage of this methodology is that the modeling of solid boundaries is performed with the calculus of a force field, which is introduced in the cells equations nearby the solid. This procedure dispenses the using of body-fitted meshes, enabling the adoption of conventional Cartesian meshes to model complex and moving geometries. The methodology was coupled with the solution of the governing equations in cylindrical coordinates though the Finite Volume Method. Firstly, the methodology was validated, confronting the results obtained with data from numerical and experimental studies, where the influence of the main parameters in the quality of the final results was evaluated. In the second step were developed preliminary studies concerning the movement of the superior disk, whose opening and closing movements were artificially imposed. The results obtained showed that the adopted methodology is quit promising and flexible, and can be employed in more refined studies to the comprehension of the flow through the valve regarding the fluid-structure interaction that rules the problem / Orientador: José Luiz Gasche / Coorientador: Júlio Militzer / Banca: Cassio Roberto Macedo Maia / Banca: Elie Luis Martinez Padilla / Mestre

Immersed boundary methods are a class of techniques in computational fluid dynamics where the Navier-Stokes equations are simulated on a computational grid that does not conform to the interfaces in the domain of interest. This facilitates the simulation of flows with complex moving and deforming geometries without considerable effort wasted in generating the mesh. The first part of this dissertation is concerned with the aerodynamics of the cross-section of a species of flying snake, Chrysopelea paradisi (paradise tree snake). Past experiments have shown that the unique cross-section of this snake, which can be described as a lifting bluff body, produces an unusual lift curve--with a pronounced peak in lift coefficient at an angle of attack of 35 degrees for Reynolds numbers 9000 and beyond. We studied the aerodynamics of the cross-section using a 2-D immersed boundary method code. We were able to qualitatively reproduce the spike in the lift coefficient at the same angle of attack for flows beyond a Reynolds number of 2000. This phenomenon was associated with flow separation at the leading edge of the body that did not result in a stall. This produced a stronger vortex and an associated reduction in pressure on the dorsal surface of the snake cross-section, which resulted in higher lift. The second part of this work deals with the analysis of the direct forcing method, which is a popular immersed boundary method for flows with rigid boundaries. We begin with the fully discretized Navier-Stokes equations along with the appropriate boundary conditions applied at the solid boundary, and derive the fractional step method as an approximate block LU decomposition of this system. This results in an alternate formulation of the direct forcing method that takes into consideration mass conservation at the immersed boundaries and also handles the pressure boundary conditions more consistently. We demonstrate that this method is between first and second-order accurate in space when linear interpolation is used to enforce the boundary conditions on velocity. We then develop a theory for the order of accuracy of the direct forcing method with linear interpolation. For a simple 1-D case, we show that the method can converge at a range of rates for different locations of the solid body with respect to the mesh. But this effect averages out in higher dimensions and results in a scheme that has the same order of accuracy as the expected order of accuracy of the interpolation at the boundary. The discrete direct forcing method for the Navier-Stokes equations exhibits an order of accuracy between 1 and 2 because the velocities at the boundary are linearly interpolated, but the resulting boundary conditions on the pressure gradient turn out to be only first-order accurate. We recommend linearly interpolating the pressure gradient as well to make the method fully second-order accurate. We have also developed two open source codes in the course of these studies. The first, cuIBM, is a two-dimensional immersed boundary method code that runs on a single GPU. It can simulate incompressible flow around rigid bodies with prescribed motion. It is based on the general idea of a fractional step method as an approximate block LU decomposition, and can incorporate any type of immersed boundary method that can be made to fit within this framework. The second code, PetIBM, can simulate both two and three-dimensional incompressible flow and runs in parallel on multiple CPUs. Both codes have been validated using well-known test cases.

A equação de Poisson-Boltzmann tem uma vasta gama de aplicações, desde a ciência coloidal e microfluídica até bioquímica e biofísica. O potencial elétrico na dupla camada elétrica leva a um potencial de força, em termos das equações de Navier-Stokes que é então usado para simular o fluxo resultante. Em escoamentos bifásicos uma simplificação desta equação é usada para se obter o campo de pressão. O presente trabalho tem como principal objetivo estudar o problema de Poisson-Boltzmann com coeficiente constante e propor uma solução através da implementação do método das interfaces imersas utilizando diferenças finitas de altas ordens de precisão numérica. / The Poisson-Boltzmann equation has a wide range of applications, from colloidal and microfluidic science to biochemistry and biophysics. The electrical potential in electric double layer leads to a force potential in terms of the Navier-Stokes equations that is then used to simulate the resulting flow. In biphasic flows a simplification of this equation is used to obtain the pressure field. The present study has as main objective to study the problem of Poisson-Boltzmann with constant coefficient and propose a solution through implementation of the immersed interfaces method using high order finite difference scheme sand thus get high order numerical accuracy.

Simulação de fluidos tem sido um dos focos principais de pesquisa em computação gráfica nos últimos anos. O interesse por tal assunto é motivado pelas aplicações na indústria cinematográfica, jogos e sistemas voltados para simulação de fenômenos físicos realísticos em tempo real. Neste trabalho atacamos um problema ainda pouco explorado pela comunidade de computação gráfica, a simulação de fluidos em imagens digitais. Adotamos uma abordagem relacionando fluidos multifásicos, onde propriedades da imagem são incorporadas às equações de Navier-Stokes a fim de permitir que objetos contidos nas imagens \"escoem\" interagindo a forças que agem no sistema / In the last years, fluid simulation has been one of the main focus in Computer Graphics. Such a reason is related to applications to film industry, games and frameworks for realtime physical problem simulations. In this work we aim at accessing a problem which is not so much explored in Computer Graphics: fluid simulation in digital images. We adopt a approach related to multiphase fluids, where properties of the image are set to the Navier-Stokes equations in order to allow that objects into the images \"flow\"in accordance to the forces in the system

As ever more challenging designs are required in present-day industries, the traditional trial-and-error procedure frequently used for designing mechanical parts slows down the design process and yields suboptimal designs, so that new approaches are needed to obtain a competitive advantage. With the ascent of the Finite Element Method (FEM) in the engineering community in the 1970s, structural shape optimization arose as a promising area of application. However, due to the iterative nature of shape optimization processes, the handling of large quantities of numerical models along with the approximated character of numerical methods may even dissuade the use of these techniques (or fail to exploit their full potential) because the development time of new products is becoming ever shorter. This Thesis is concerned with the formulation of a 3D methodology based on the Cartesian-grid Finite Element Method (cgFEM) as a tool for efficient and robust numerical analysis. This methodology belongs to the category of embedded (or fictitious) domain discretization techniques in which the key concept is to extend the structural analysis problem to an easy-to-mesh approximation domain that encloses the physical domain boundary. The use of Cartesian grids provides a natural platform for structural shape optimization because the numerical domain is separated from a physical model, which can easily be changed during the optimization procedure without altering the background discretization. Another advantage is the fact that mesh generation becomes a trivial task since the discretization of the numerical domain and its manipulation, in combination with an efficient hierarchical data structure, can be exploited to save computational effort. However, these advantages are challenged by several numerical issues. Basically, the computational effort has moved from the use of expensive meshing algorithms towards the use of, for example, elaborate numerical integration schemes designed to capture the mismatch between the geometrical domain boundary and the embedding finite element mesh. To do this we used a stabilized formulation to impose boundary conditions and developed novel techniques to be able to capture the exact boundary representation of the models. To complete the implementation of a structural shape optimization method an adjunct formulation is used for the differentiation of the design sensitivities required for gradient-based algorithms. The derivatives are not only the variables required for the process, but also compose a powerful tool for projecting information between different designs, or even projecting the information to create h-adapted meshes without going through a full h-adaptive refinement process. The proposed improvements are reflected in the numerical examples included in this Thesis. These analyses clearly show the improved behavior of the cgFEM technology as regards numerical accuracy and computational efficiency, and consequently the suitability of the cgFEM approach for shape optimization or contact problems. / La competitividad en la industria actual impone la necesidad de generar nuevos y mejores diseños. El tradicional procedimiento de prueba y error, usado a menudo para el diseño de componentes mecánicos, ralentiza el proceso de diseño y produce diseños subóptimos, por lo que se necesitan nuevos enfoques para obtener una ventaja competitiva. Con el desarrollo del Método de los Elementos Finitos (MEF) en el campo de la ingeniería en la década de 1970, la optimización de forma estructural surgió como un área de aplicación prometedora. El entorno industrial cada vez más exigente implica ciclos cada vez más cortos de desarrollo de nuevos productos. Por tanto, la naturaleza iterativa de los procesos de optimización de forma, que supone el análisis de gran cantidad de geometrías (para las se han de usar modelos numéricos de gran tamaño a fin de limitar el efecto de los errores intrínsecamente asociados a las técnicas numéricas), puede incluso disuadir del uso de estas técnicas. Esta Tesis se centra en la formulación de una metodología 3D basada en el Cartesian-grid Finite Element Method (cgFEM) como herramienta para un análisis numérico eficiente y robusto. Esta metodología pertenece a la categoría de técnicas de discretización Immersed Boundary donde el concepto clave es extender el problema de análisis estructural a un dominio de aproximación, que contiene la frontera del dominio físico, cuya discretización (mallado) resulte sencilla. El uso de mallados cartesianos proporciona una plataforma natural para la optimización de forma estructural porque el dominio numérico está separado del modelo físico, que podrá cambiar libremente durante el procedimiento de optimización sin alterar la discretización subyacente. Otro argumento positivo reside en el hecho de que la generación de malla se convierte en una tarea trivial. La discretización del dominio numérico y su manipulación, en coalición con la eficiencia de una estructura jerárquica de datos, pueden ser explotados para ahorrar coste computacional. Sin embargo, estas ventajas pueden ser cuestionadas por varios problemas numéricos. Básicamente, el esfuerzo computacional se ha desplazado. Del uso de costosos algoritmos de mallado nos movemos hacia el uso de, por ejemplo, esquemas de integración numérica elaborados para poder capturar la discrepancia entre la frontera del dominio geométrico y la malla de elementos finitos que lo embebe. Para ello, utilizamos, por un lado, una formulación de estabilización para imponer condiciones de contorno y, por otro lado, hemos desarrollado nuevas técnicas para poder captar la representación exacta de los modelos geométricos. Para completar la implementación de un método de optimización de forma estructural se usa una formulación adjunta para derivar las sensibilidades de diseño requeridas por los algoritmos basados en gradiente. Las derivadas no son sólo variables requeridas para el proceso, sino una poderosa herramienta para poder proyectar información entre diferentes diseños o, incluso, proyectar la información para crear mallas h-adaptadas sin pasar por un proceso completo de refinamiento h-adaptativo. Las mejoras propuestas se reflejan en los ejemplos numéricos presentados en esta Tesis. Estos análisis muestran claramente el comportamiento superior de la tecnología cgFEM en cuanto a precisión numérica y eficiencia computacional. En consecuencia, el enfoque cgFEM se postula como una herramienta adecuada para la optimización de forma. / Actualment, amb la competència existent en la industria, s'imposa la necessitat de generar nous i millors dissenys . El tradicional procediment de prova i error, que amb freqüència es fa servir pel disseny de components mecànics, endarrereix el procés de disseny i produeix dissenys subòptims, pel que es necessiten nous enfocaments per obtindre avantatge competitiu. Amb el desenvolupament del Mètode dels Elements Finits (MEF) en el camp de l'enginyeria en la dècada de 1970, l'optimització de forma estructural va sorgir com un àrea d'aplicació prometedora. No obstant això, a causa de la natura iterativa dels processos d'optimització de forma, la manipulació dels models numèrics en grans quantitats, junt amb l'error de discretització dels mètodes numèrics, pot fins i tot dissuadir de l'ús d'aquestes tècniques (o d'explotar tot el seu potencial), perquè al mateix temps els cicles de desenvolupament de nous productes s'estan acurtant. Esta Tesi se centra en la formulació d'una metodologia 3D basada en el Cartesian-grid Finite Element Method (cgFEM) com a ferramenta per una anàlisi numèrica eficient i sòlida. Esta metodologia pertany a la categoria de tècniques de discretització Immersed Boundary on el concepte clau és expandir el problema d'anàlisi estructural a un domini d'aproximació fàcil de mallar que conté la frontera del domini físic. L'utilització de mallats cartesians proporciona una plataforma natural per l'optimització de forma estructural perquè el domini numèric està separat del model físic, que podria canviar lliurement durant el procediment d'optimització sense alterar la discretització subjacent. A més, un altre argument positiu el trobem en què la generació de malla es converteix en una tasca trivial, ja que la discretització del domini numèric i la seua manipulació, en coalició amb l'eficiència d'una estructura jeràrquica de dades, poden ser explotats per estalviar cost computacional. Tot i això, estos avantatges poden ser qüestionats per diversos problemes numèrics. Bàsicament, l'esforç computacional s'ha desplaçat. De l'ús de costosos algoritmes de mallat ens movem cap a l'ús de, per exemple, esquemes d'integració numèrica elaborats per poder capturar la discrepància entre la frontera del domini geomètric i la malla d'elements finits que ho embeu. Per això, fem ús, d'una banda, d'una formulació d'estabilització per imposar condicions de contorn i, d'un altra, desevolupem noves tècniques per poder captar la representació exacta dels models geomètrics Per completar la implementació d'un mètode d'optimització de forma estructural es fa ús d'una formulació adjunta per derivar les sensibilitats de disseny requerides pels algoritmes basats en gradient. Les derivades no són únicament variables requerides pel procés, sinó una poderosa ferramenta per poder projectar informació entre diferents dissenys o, fins i tot, projectar la informació per crear malles h-adaptades sense passar per un procés complet de refinament h-adaptatiu. Les millores proposades s'evidencien en els exemples numèrics presentats en esta Tesi. Estes anàlisis mostren clarament el comportament superior de la tecnologia cgFEM en tant a precisió numèrica i eficiència computacional. Així, l'enfocament cgFEM es postula com una ferramenta adient per l'optimització de forma. / Marco Alacid, O. (2017). Structural Shape Optimization Based On The Use Of Cartesian Grids [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/86195 / TESIS