Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 185-189).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 130-138).

Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2007. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains x, 101 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 97-101).

Thesis (M.Phil.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 73-75).

Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1994. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 103). Also available via the Internet.

Gussets plates are used in truss structures to connect multiple members. It is for this reason that it is important that the gusset plate have adequate strength to transfer forces between members, otherwise a failure in a gusset plate can cause the entire truss structure to fail. This study will focus on a gusset plate that is believed to have been under designed on the I-35W Minneapolis bridge. Three possible sources of failure will be investigated: yielding of the gusset plate, fracture of the gusset plate, and buckling of the gusset plate. Various sources such as the plans for the truss and an interim report on its failure will be utilized to construct the model for the finite element analysis. The results obtained from the finite element analysis and the traditional analysis approach using uniform force method will be used to investigate the failure of the gusset plate.

No description available.

Problems with time-evolving domains are frequently occurring in computationalfluid dynamics and many other fields of science and engineering.Unfitted methods, where the computational mesh does not conform to thegeometry, are of great interest for handling such problems, since they removethe burden of mesh generation. We work towards the goal of developingan unfitted solver for Navier-Stokes equations on time-evolving domainsby developing and presenting cut finite element (CutFEM) splitting methodsfor solving Navier-Stokes equations. These CutFEM splitting methodsuse Nitsche’s method for incorporating boundary conditions and employpatch-based ghost penalty stabilization of the cut elements to achieve stabilityand optimal order error estimates. Numerical benchmarks are used toverify the methods and implementations. The methods are tested against aproblem with known analytical solution, the Taylor-Green vortex, and alsocompared to the classical Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) benchmarkproblem with channel flow around a cylinder. For both benchmarks,the methods was shown to be stable when satisfying the parabolic Courant–Friedrichs–Lewy (CFL) condition, and to produce optimal convergencerates.

Despite many research pieces on brake systems, there is still research to be done on brake pad geometry and the dissipation of heat during brake engagements using the finite element analysis method. Brake application is a process in which the kinetic energy of the vehicle is mostly converted into thermal energy and then dissipated in the form of heat. Based on dynamometer test results it was seen that brake pad temperatures could reach up to 600° C [23]. Preliminary research using computer modeling software has shown that heat dissipation in brake pads with wavy geometries and air channels from the top to bottom is much better compared to pads that do not have those specific features. Brake pads that dissipate heat faster are prone to brake fade and other braking issues that may arise due to overheating [15]. For this research, two readily available brake pads and two designs of brake pads with new geometry were modeled using CAE software. Finite element analysis was then performed to test how well each brake pad dissipated heat after reaching brake fade temperatures. The readily available brake pads were from Power Stop and Wagner [26]. ANSYS Space Claim [25] was used to design and model the brake pads, ANSYS 18.2 [24] was used to perform the finite element analysis on the pads. After performing the analysis, results indicate that a brake pad with a design that had zones for turbulent air at ambient conditions and convection slots from the top to the bottom decreased in temperature by about 90° C more in the same time compared to the conventional design. By studying the changing values of the convection heat transfer coefficient with velocity, the placing of the turbulence zones can be more precise in order attain greater airflow to remove heat from the brake pad quicker.

In the present thesis, a computational framework for the analysis of coupled hydro-fracture flow in deformable porous media using a Finite/Discrete Element Method is presented. In this context, a series of developments have been made in order to provide a more efficient and robust numerical model capable of dealing with oil production and slope stability problems. The mechanical response of the skeleton is highly dependent on its seepage behaviour as pore pressure modifications affect the in situ stress field. The u-p formulation has been employed using an explicit time integration scheme where fully saturated and single-phase partially saturated analysis are incorporated for 2-D and 3-D cases. Owing to their inherent simplicity, low order elements provide an excellent framework in which contact conditions coupled with crack propagation can be dealt with in an effective manner. For linear elements this implies single point integration which, however, can result in spurious zero-energy modes. Therefore, in order to obtain reliable results, a stabilization technique has been devised to eliminate hourglassing. The success of the modelling strategy ultimately depends on the interdependence of different phenomena. The linking between the displacement components, network and pore pressures represents an important role in the efficiency of the overall coupling procedure. Therefore, a master-slave technique is proposed to link seepage and network fields, proving to be particularly attractive from a computational cost point of view. Another important development that has provided substantial savings in CPU times is the use of an explicit-explicit subcycling scheme. Numerical examples have been used to assess the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed framework. Special attention is focused on the investigation of hydraulic fracture propagation in oil production problems and plane failure analysis of the stability of slopes.