A simulation-based design paradigm for complex cast components

Abstract

This paper describes and exercises a new design paradigm for cast components. The methodology integrates foundry process simulation, non-destructive evaluation (NDE), stress analysis and damage tolerance simulations into the design process. Foundry process simulation is used to predict an array of porosity-related anomalies. The probability of detection of these anomalies is investigated with a radiographic inspection simulation tool (XRSIM). The likelihood that the predicted array of anomalies will lead to a failure is determined by a fatigue crack growth simulation based on the extended finite element method and therefore does not require meshing nor remeshing as the cracks grow. With this approach, the casting modeling provides initial anomaly information, the stress analysis provides a value for the critical size of an anomaly and the NDE assessment provides a detectability measure. The combination of these tools allows for accept/reject criteria to be determined at the early design stage and enables damage tolerant design philosophies. The methodology is applied to the design of a cast monolithic door used on the Boeing 757 aircraft.

A smoothed finite element method for plate analysis

“…This will be investigated in the future using open source XFEM libraries [15,21]. The MISCk elements can be extended to non-linear material models including strong discontinuities such as in the eXtended finite element method (XFEM) introduced by [8,9,42,41] and improved to handle complex industrial structures in [14,11] and, later, [59,58,56,57]. For discontinuous problems, an adaptive procedure might be useful as well, for instance, following the seminal work presented in [13,12,20].…”

Meshless methods: A review and computer implementation aspects

“…However, remeshing is costly, still difficult in three dimensions and requires projection of quantities between successive meshes and consequential degradation of accuracy. An alternative to remeshing in a finite element context is the extended finite element method (XFEM) [6,79,24,45,23,22] enriches the approximation space so that weak and strong discontinuities can be captured.…”

A combined extended finite element and level set method for biofilm growth

“…The XFEM has been efficiently coupled with level set methods in different ways for different problems relating to crack growth [31][32][33] and solidification [34][35][36]. The XFEM has diverse applications and was recently used for industrial damage tolerance analysis [37,38]. Open source codes are now available for the XFEM [39,40].…”