Virtual Delamination Testing through Non-Linear Multi-Scale Computational Methods: Some Recent Progress

Abstract: This paper deals with the parallel simulation of delamination problems at the meso-scale by means of multi-scale methods, the aim being the Virtual Delamination Testing of Composite parts. In the non-linear context, Domain Decomposition Methods are mainly used as a solver for the tangent problem to be solved at each iteration of a Newton-Raphson algorithm. In case of strongly nonlinear and heterogeneous problems, this procedure may lead to severe difficulties. The paper focuses on methods to circumvent these problems, which can now be expressed using a relatively general framework, even though the different ingredients of the strategy have emerged separately. We rely here on the micro-macro framework proposed in (Ladev`eze, Loiseau, and Dureisseix, 2001). The method proposed in this paper introduces three additional features: (i) the adaptation of the macro-basis to situations where classical homogenization does not provide a good preconditioner, (ii) the use of non-linear relocalization to decrease the number of global problems to be solved in the case of unevenly distributed non-linearities, (iii) the adaptation of the approximation of the local Schur complement which governs the convergence of the proposed iterative technique. Computations of delamination and delamination-buckling interaction with contact on potentially large delaminated areas are used to illustrate those aspects.