To Whom It May Concern, I am a graduate student who will be defending in the not-too-distant future, and afterwards I want to remain in the research community even though I will be leaving academia for the foreseeable future. My research group has an established cohesive-zone model (CZM) code that is used in Abaqus, and I have been using this for all of my graduate work. The main drawback to not switching over to deal.ii years ago was that it lacks the ability to model crack-propagation (which is the main focus of my research), and the resistance to changing from a code the group knows already works.
After I graduate, I want to move to completely (or nearly completely) open-source computation methods. deal.ii looks to be the best open-source FEM option, but using it will require me to write a new FiniteElement to implement the cohesive-zone model (as I still want to work on fracture mechanics). I have read some threads about the ability to use ``zero-thickness'' cohesive/surface elements that have been used by others to model crack-propagation, but I think that is not the preferred method to deal with fracture. With this in mind, would a user/developer be willing to guide me along the path of writing a new FiniteElement? I have already written initial traction-separation laws (in C++) that could be used in a "volume" cohesive-zone element. I have collected papers of others who have already written cohesive-zone finite-elements for the commercial software package Abaqus, and my intention would be to replicate this work (with perhaps some small modifications/improvements) for deal.ii so that I can continue work in fracture mechanics. Additionally, does deal.ii have the capabilities of the so-called A-FEM (augmented finite element method)? A-FEM allows one element to change an element from one finite-element into another finite-element during the calculation. An example from fracture mechanics: starting with an initially isotropic elastic calculation of generic shape, when a certain stress threshold is met by an element, the elastic element is replaced with a CZM element to allow for arbitrary crack-initiation and propagation to occur. Note: other FEM-based methods appear to use this same idea of replacing one element type with another during a calculation, but I am do not have extensive knowledge of the nuanced differences between them. Sincerely, James Gorman -- The deal.II project is located at http://www.dealii.org/ For mailing list/forum options, see https://groups.google.com/d/forum/dealii?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "deal.II User Group" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
