Neste trabalho, a formulação linear do método dos elementos de contorno - MEC, baseada nas hipóteses de Kirchhoff, é adaptada à análise de estruturas de pavimentos de edifícios, considerando-se as interações entre elementos lineares e de superfície. Leva-se em conta, além da flexão, o comportamento dos elementos como membrana. A representação integral deduzida contempla todos os elementos estruturais envolvidos, portanto garantido a monoliticidade do conjunto sem a necessidade de impor compatibilizações de deslocamentos e equilíbrio das forças generalizadas de superfícies ao longo das interfaces. A formulação integral é deduzida a partir da primeira identidade de Betti, onde a placa é considerada com variação de espessura, quer seja contínua ou abrupta. Porém, nesse trabalho apenas o caso de placas e vigas com rigidez constante são tratados. A partir dessa formulação, a fim de reduzir o número de graus de liberdade do problema, apresenta-se um modelo alternativo, onde as vigas são representadas por seus eixos médios. Estende-se essa formulação à análise não-linear, através da inclusão de campos de esforços iniciais, onde as integrais de domínio são calculadas aproximando-se o campo de esforços iniciais em células internas. A solução não-linear é obtida a partir da formulação implícita, na qual as correções que devem ser dadas aos estados de curvatura e das deformações de chapa em uma determinada iteração, são obtidas através do operador tangente consistente, que é atualizado a cada iteração, e da correção dos esforços nos pontos da placa. O critério elasto-plástico utilizado é o de Von Mises e a distribuição das tensões é aproximada, em uma seção qualquer da placa, por pontos discretos, que seguindo um esquema gaussiano, permite a integração numérica para o cálculo dos esforços. / In this work, the plate bending linear formulation of the boundary element method - BEM, based on the Kirchhoff\'s hypothesis, is extended to incorporate beam elements. The final objective of the work is to obtain a numerical model to analyse building floor structures, in which stiffness is further increased by the presence of membrane effects. From the boundary integral representations of the bending and the stretching problems a particular integral equation to represent the equilibrium of the whole body is obtained. Using this integral equation, no approximation of the generalized forces along the interface is required. Moreover, compatibility and equilibrium conditions along the interface are automatically imposed by the integral equation. An alternative formulation where the number of degrees of freedom is further reduced is also investigated. In this case, the kinematics Navier-Bernoulli hypothesis is assumed to simplify the strain field for the thin sub-regions (beams). Then, the formulation is extended to perform non-linear analysis by incorporating initial effort fields. Then non-linear solution is obtained using the concept of the local consistent tangent operator. The domain integral required, to evaluate the initial effort influences, are performed by using the well-known cell sub-division. The non-linear behaviour is evaluated by the Von Mises criterion, that is verified at points along the plate thickness, appropriately placed to allow performing numerical integration to approach moments and normal forces using Gauss point schemes.

Este trabalho trata da formulação do Método dos Elementos de Contorno para o problema de flexão de placas através da teoria clássica de Kirchhoff. Ênfase especial é dada a placas com variação de espessura uma vez que este tema é muito pouco abordado. O estudo de flexão de placas com variação de espessura é exercida em vários campos, tais como engenharia civil, engenharia aeroespacial e projeto de máquinas. Adotou-se uma variação linear da rigidez, resultando nas equações integrais de deslocamentos com termos de domínios, que serão tratados por discretização do domínio em células. / This work deals with the formulation of the Boundary Element Method applied to plate bending problem using the Kirchhoff\'s theories. Special emphasis is given to plates with varying thickness since this subject is not much tackled. The study of the bending of plates of variable thickness is pursued in various fields, such as civil engineering, aerospace engineering, and the design of machines. It was adopted linearly varying rigidity, giving integral equations of displacements with domain terms, that will be treated by domain discretization into cells.

O objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar uma nova formulação direta do Método dos Elementos de Contorno (M.E.C.) para análise de placas, utilizando a teoria de Kirchhoff, admitindo três parâmetros nodais de deslocamentos para sua representação integral: deslocamento transversal e suas derivadas nas direções normal e tangencial ao contorno. Dois valores nodais são usados para os esforços, momento fletor normal mn e força cortante equivalente Vn. Desta forma são escritas três equações integrais de contorno por nó, obtidas a partir da discretização da placa, segundo a forma usual do método. A vantagem mais perceptível desta formulação é a possibilidade de se fazer a ligação da placa analisada pelo M.E.C. com elementos lineares, representados por três valores nodais de deslocamentos que passam a ser compatibilizados diretamente, para a análise de edifícios. São apresentados exemplos numéricos da formulação e das ligações para comprovação da formulação. / The aim of this work is to present an alternative formulation for plate bending analysis, using Kirchhoff\'s theory, in wich the boundary equation for displacements and its derivative in tangential and normal directions to the boundary for each boundary node are used. The efforts, according to Kirchhoff\'s theory, are the normal bending mn and the equivalent shear force Vn. This formulation is adequate for the analysis of plates coupled with flexible colunms and beams because these structural elements have three nodal displacement values at its nodes. Many examples of single plates and buildings slab are presented using the formulation proposed in this work.

This paper concerns the solution of plate bending problems in domains composed of rectangles. Domain decomposition (DD) is the basic tool used for both the parallelization of the conjugate gradient method and the construction of efficient parallel preconditioners. A so-called Dirich- let DD preconditioner for systems of linear equations arising from the fi- nite element approximation by non-conforming Adini elements is derived. It is based on the non-overlapping DD, a multilevel preconditioner for the Schur-complement and a fast, almost direct solution method for the Dirichlet problem in rectangular domains based on fast Fourier transform. Making use of Xu's theory of the auxiliary space method we construct an optimal preconditioner for plate problems discretized by conforming Bogner-Fox-Schmidt rectangles. Results of numerical experiments carried out on a multiprocessor sys- tem are given. For the test problems considered the number of iterations is bounded independent of the mesh sizes and independent of the number of subdomains. The resulting parallel preconditioned conjugate gradient method requiresO(h^-2 ln h^-1 ln epsilon^-11) arithmetical operations per processor in order to solve the finite element equations with the relative accuracy epsilon.

The application of piezoelectric sensors such as the ultrasonic transducer has significantly enhanced the fields of nondestructive evaluation (NDE). Their application of piezoelectric materials allows for the sensing of low energy, high frequency acoustic emission (AE) events such as fatigue cracking in metals and delamination in composites. Utilizing the physical characteristics of these AE waves, the location of these structural defects can then be source located by means of time-of-flight trilateration. The real time sensing of such events has led to the field of structural health monitoring (SHM) and has revolutionized NDE. Furthermore, with the application of modern micro-electromechanical system-based (MEMS) technology, the fields of NDE and SHM can be improved greatly, and sensing instrumentation simplified. A novel piezoresistive-based MEMS strain sensor is presented as this improvement to NDE and SHM. The ultrathin silicon membrane-based (USM) strain sensor's ability to capture an AE signal is demonstrated by a Hsu-Nielsen source and shows comparable frequency content to a commercial piezoceramic ultrasonic transducer. To the knowledge of the authors, this makes the USM strain sensor the first known piezoresistive strain sensor capable of recording low energy AE. The novel improvements to NDE and SHM arise from the sensor's low minimum detectable strain and wide frequency bandwidth, enabling a dual-use application of both AE and static strain sensing. The USM sensor's ability to document quasi-static bending is demonstrated and once again compared with an ultrasonic transducer, which provides no significant response. This dual-use application is proposed to effectively combine the uses of both strain and ultrasonic transducer sensor types within one sensor, lending itself novel and useful to NDE and SHM. The potential benefits include enhanced sensitivity, reduced sensor size and cost, and reduced instrumentation complexity. / Master of Science / Visual inspection for cracks and defects has long been staples of assessing structural health throughout human history. These surface imperfections are an obvious hindrance to structural integrity and routine observation and inspection is needed to ensure a structure's safety. With the progression of technology and the discovery of piezoelectric materials, more advanced methods have been devised to detect and source locate not only surface level but sub-surface cracking. This has been accomplished through the use of piezoelectric ultrasonic transducers to monitor the propagation of acoustic emission (AE) vibrations, which are the result of energy redistribution by events such as cracking. The remote monitoring of AE events has led to the growth of the nondestructive evaluation (NDE) field, where these cracks and defects can be located by the detection of their AE source. These transducers, however, are met with limitations in their applications. Operating off the piezoelectric effect allows for a superb response to low energy, high frequency excitation characteristic of AE, but results in no response to quasi-static strain measurements, such as that of a slowly applied bending load on a plate. In the work herein, modern micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) based technology is utilized to devise a sensor capable of both AE and static strain measurements. The dual sensing of both of these measurements can allow for the source location of cracking events along with the monitoring of structure strain, effectively combining the use of two sensors into one. This dual-application use can have a great impact on the evaluation of critical structures like bridges and aircraft and simplify and reduce costs inherent to nondestructive evaluation.

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This paper concerns the solution of plate bending problems in domains composed of rectangles. Domain decomposition (DD) is the basic tool used for both the parallelization of the conjugate gradient method and the construction of efficient parallel preconditioners. A so-called Dirich- let DD preconditioner for systems of linear equations arising from the fi- nite element approximation by non-conforming Adini elements is derived. It is based on the non-overlapping DD, a multilevel preconditioner for the Schur-complement and a fast, almost direct solution method for the Dirichlet problem in rectangular domains based on fast Fourier transform. Making use of Xu's theory of the auxiliary space method we construct an optimal preconditioner for plate problems discretized by conforming Bogner-Fox-Schmidt rectangles. Results of numerical experiments carried out on a multiprocessor sys- tem are given. For the test problems considered the number of iterations is bounded independent of the mesh sizes and independent of the number of subdomains. The resulting parallel preconditioned conjugate gradient method requiresO(h^-2 ln h^-1 ln epsilon^-11) arithmetical operations per processor in order to solve the finite element equations with the relative accuracy epsilon.

This work describes the design of a dedicated three-rolls hydraulic bending for Hardox 500 without the possibility of bending sheet metal for the manufacture of pipes. The work will analyze the problem of proposed three-rolls bending, bending technology and creating of the pre-bending, the design of the adjusting hydraulic servo-cylinder, planetary gearboxes with hydraulic motors to drive the bottom rollers, a partial draft of the hydraulic circuit and the complete frame structure of bending machine with its covers.

A couple of discretization schemes, based on an FE-like tessellation of the domain and polynomial reproducing, globally smooth shape functions, are considered and numerically explored to a limited extent. The first one among these is an existing scheme, the smooth DMS-FEM, that employs Delaunay triangulation or tetrahedralization (as approximate) towards discretizing the domain geometry employs triangular (tetrahedral) B-splines as kernel functions en route to the construction of polynomial reproducing functional approximations. In order to verify the numerical accuracy of the smooth DMS-FEM vis-à-vis the conventional FEM, a Mindlin-Reissner plate bending problem is numerically solved. Thanks to the higher order continuity in the functional approximant and the consequent removal of the jump terms in the weak form across inter-triangular boundaries, the numerical accuracy via the DMS-FEM approximation is observed to be higher than that corresponding to the conventional FEM. This advantage notwithstanding, evaluations of DMS-FEM based shape functions encounter singularity issues on the triangle vertices as well as over the element edges. This shortcoming is presently overcome through a new proposal that replaces the triangular B-splines by simplex splines, constructed over polygonal domains, as the kernel functions in the polynomial reproduction scheme. Following a detailed presentation of the issues related to its computational implementation, the new method is numerically explored with the results attesting to a higher attainable numerical accuracy in comparison with the DMS-FEM.