The topic of this thesis is the numerical simulation of transversely isotropic 3D structures and laminates by means of the adaptive finite element method. To achieve this goal, the theoretical background of elastic deformation problems, transverse isotropy, plate theory, and the classical laminate theory is recapitulated. The classical laminate theory implies a combination of the membrane problem and the plate problem with additional coupling terms. The focus of this work is the adjustment of two integral parts of the adaptive FE algorithm according to the classical laminate theory. One of these parts is the solution of the FE system; a good preconditioner is needed in order to use the conjugate gradient method efficiently. It is shown via a spectral equivalence bound that the combination of existing preconditioners for the membrane and plate problems poses a capable preconditioner for the combined laminate problem. The other part is the error estimation process; the error estimator determines where the current mesh has to be refined for the next step. Existing results on residual error estimators for the elasticity problem, the biharmonic problem, and the plate problem are combined and extended to obtain a posteriori local residual error indicators for the classical laminate theory problem. The effectiveness of both results is demonstrated by numerical examples.

The topic of this thesis is the numerical simulation of transversely isotropic 3D structures and laminates by means of the adaptive finite element method. To achieve this goal, the theoretical background of elastic deformation problems, transverse isotropy, plate theory, and the classical laminate theory is recapitulated. The classical laminate theory implies a combination of the membrane problem and the plate problem with additional coupling terms. The focus of this work is the adjustment of two integral parts of the adaptive FE algorithm according to the classical laminate theory. One of these parts is the solution of the FE system; a good preconditioner is needed in order to use the conjugate gradient method efficiently. It is shown via a spectral equivalence bound that the combination of existing preconditioners for the membrane and plate problems poses a capable preconditioner for the combined laminate problem. The other part is the error estimation process; the error estimator determines where the current mesh has to be refined for the next step. Existing results on residual error estimators for the elasticity problem, the biharmonic problem, and the plate problem are combined and extended to obtain a posteriori local residual error indicators for the classical laminate theory problem. The effectiveness of both results is demonstrated by numerical examples.:1 Introduction 1.1 Motivation 1.2 Organisation of this work 1.3 Notation and basic definitions 2 Basic theory of 3D simulation 2.1 Differential geometry 2.1.1 Initial and deformed domain 2.1.2 Strain tensor 2.2 Energy functional 2.2.1 Linearly elastic material law 2.2.2 Equilibrium of forces 2.2.3 Large deformations 2.2.4 Small deformations 2.3 Voigt notation and elasticity matrix 3 Transversely isotropic material law 3.1 Elasticity tensor 3.2 Conversion of the material constants 3.3 Elasticity matrix 3.4 Eigenvalues 3.5 State of plane strain 3.6 State of plane stress 4 Plate theory and classical laminate theory 4.1 The Kirchhoff–Love hypothesis 4.2 Constitutive law and bilinear form of the laminated plate 4.3 Definition of resultants 4.4 Boundary conditions 4.5 From the equilibrium conditions to the weak formulation 4.5.1 Membrane equilibrium 4.5.2 Plate equilibrium 4.5.3 Combined weak formulation 4.5.4 The CLT problem in Voigt notation 5 Discretisation 5.1 Short introduction to FEM 5.2 Adaptive FEM 5.3 Finite elements for 3D elasticity problems 5.4 Finite elements for plates 5.4 Finite elements for plates 5.4.1 BFS rectangles 5.4.2 rHCT triangles 5.5 CLT elements 5.5.1 Rectangles 5.5.2 Triangles 6 Solver and preconditioner 6.1 The preconditioned conjugate gradient method 6.2 Hierarchical basis and BPX preconditioners 6.3 Preconditioning of CLT problems 6.3.1 General laminates 6.3.2 Some special cases and examples 7 A posteriori residual error estimation 7.1 Residual error estimator for 3D elements 7.2 Residual error estimator for plate and CLT elements 7.2.1 Auxiliary definitions and assumptions on the mesh 7.2.2 Interpolation operators 7.2.3 Important inequalities 7.2.4 Cut-off functions 7.2.5 Definition of the error 7.2.6 Reliability inequality 7.2.7 Efficiency inequality 8 Some details of the implementation 8.1 The adaptive FE package SPC-PM 8.2 Remarks on some added features 8.2.1 Capability of the current code 8.2.2 Cuntze’s failure mode concept 8.3 Coordinate transformation of higher-order derivatives 8.3.1 Mapping of coordinates 8.3.2 Transformation of derivatives of up to the third-order 8.3.3 Recursive construction of transformation matrices 8.3.4 Simplification for axis-parallel rectangles 9 Numerical examples 9.1 A three-dimensional example from eniPROD 9.2 Example problems for laminates 9.2.1 Rectangular plate under in-plane load 9.2.2 Rectangular plate under vertical load 9.2.3 L-shaped plate with inhomogeneous natural boundary conditions 10 Conclusion and outlook Bibliography Acknowledgements List of main symbols Theses