Abstract
A preliminary study of the effectiveness of composite overlapping, patched grid methods has been carried out using the finite element research code ‘TOMECH’ [1]. These methods could be of particular value in situations where a fully connected mesh model is difficult to achieve or where enhanced accuracy is needed in a small sub-region of a model. The methodology required to achieve the data communication between the sub-grids and the base grid is adapted from multi-grid methods. This is a ‘Global-Local’ style approach in which a multi-grid style iterative correction is applied following the updating of the displacements on the sub-grid boundaries. The approach provides a feedback mechanism within the global-local cycle, updating the base grid solution and enabling a subsequent improved estimate to the sub-grid boundaries.
It is hoped that this study will ultimately facilitate very fine resolution, fully non-linear, damage predictions on adaptively created patched grids.
