Adaptive superposition of finite element meshes in non-linear transient solid mechanics problems

An s-adaptive finite element procedure is developed for the transient analysis of 2-D solid mechanics problems with material non-linearity due to progressive damage. The resulting adaptive method simultaneously estimates and controls both the spatial error and temporal error within user-specified tolerances. The spatial error is quantified by the Zienkiewicz–Zhu error estimator and computed via superconvergent patch recovery, while the estimation of temporal error is based on the assumption of a linearly varying third-order time derivatives of the displacement field in conjunction with direct numerical time integration. The distinguishing characteristic of the s-adaptive procedure is the use of finite element mesh superposition (s-refinement) to provide spatial adaptivity. Mesh superposition proves to be particularly advantageous in computationally demanding non-linear transient problems since it is faster, simpler and more efficient than traditional h-refinement schemes. Numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the performance characteristics of the s-adaptive method for quasi-static and transient problems with material non-linearity. Copyright q 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.