Application of the partial Dirichlet-Neumann contact algorithm to simulate low-velocity impact events on composite structures

TL;DR

This paper introduces a parallelized partial Dirichlet-Neumann contact algorithm tailored for high-performance computing to efficiently simulate low-velocity impacts on composite structures, including damage modeling.

Contribution

It extends the contact algorithm to explicit impact simulations with damage, validated on composites, and demonstrates high parallel scalability on supercomputers.

Findings

Validated on fiber-reinforced composites

Achieved efficient parallel performance on 74 million elements

Extended to explicit impact and damage simulations

Abstract

Impact simulations for damage resistance analysis are computationally intensive due to contact algorithms and advanced damage models. Both methods, which are the main ingredients in an impact event, require refined meshes at the contact zone to obtain accurate predictions of the contact force and damage onset and propagation through the material. This work presents the application of the partial Dirichlet-Neumann contact algorithm to simulate low-velocity impact problems on composite structures using High-Performance Computing. This algorithm is devised for parallel finite element codes running on supercomputers, and it is extended to explicit time integration schemes to solve impact problems including damage. The proposed framework is validated with a standard test for damage resistance on fiber-reinforced polymer matrix composites. Moreover, the parallel performance of the proposed algorithm has been evaluated in a mesh of 74M of elements running with 2400 processors.