Gerrymandering for Interfaces: Modeling the Mechanics of Jointed Structures

Abstract

Recent experiments with the Brake-Reuß-Beam (BRB), a three-bolt lap-jointed benchmark system, have shown that neither the contact pressure nor the contact area are constant within the interface during oscillation, two traditional assumptions made for modeling bolted structures. Thus, it is important to preserve interfacial kinematics and represent the underlying physics in a consistent fashion to develop consistent computational models. Most consistent formulations tend to result in large model sizes and thus make computations for large structures nearly intractable. However, there have been multiple efforts at interface reduction. Most of these formulations though, have the disadvantage of having to deal with large number of points for the nonlinear force calculations. The current study proposes an interfacial reduction approach that is both consistent with the kinematics and at the same time does not require transformations to the original coordinates. Based upon this framework, the current work also compares different criteria for the reduction procedure. The method is demonstrated to improve the efficiency of nonlinear simulations (conducted using two different approaches), with little to no sacrifice in accuracy.