Mechanical Engineering, Computational Mechanics, Modeling and Simulation, Numerical Analysis
16
Scopus Publications
Scopus Publications
QUASI-STATIC AND DYNAMIC CRACK PROPAGATION BASED ON ADAPTIVE PHASE FIELD METHOD USING NOVEL PHYSICS-BASED REFINEMENT CRITERIA Hirshikesh, A.L.N. Pramod, V. Nathan, Haim Waisman, Sundararajan Natarajan International Journal for Multiscale Computational Engineering, 2026 The present work extends recently proposed physics-based refinement criteria to dynamic crack propagation problems and discusses the implementation of the same in an open-source finite element package, FEniCS in both two and three dimensions. The efficacy and the robustness (in terms of the degrees of freedom) of the implementation is demonstrated against uniform refinement and other adaptive methods proposed in the literature. In addition to the standard benchmark problems, we also discuss the effect of Poisson's ratio and Young's modulus mismatch on the crack path in a glass composite. From this study, it can been seen that the proposed approach requires a fewer number of elements when compared to uniform refinement to yield comparable results. The current implementation provides a starting point to an efficient framework to fracture problems for practical engineering with less experience with coding skills.
Sloshing reduction in a swaying tank with porous baffles using scaled boundary finite element method A. L. N. Pramod, Aditi Choudhury, K. G. Vijay, Ean Tat Ooi, Sundararajan Natarajan Physics of Fluids, 2025 Sloshing is an inevitable phenomenon in an ocean-going vessel that can have adverse effects. In this work, the mitigation of sloshing is investigated using multiple thin porous baffles of various configurations in a partially filled swaying tank. The boundary value problem is solved within the framework of a linearized potential flow theory using the scaled boundary finite element method. The flow through the thin porous baffles is assumed to follow Darcy's law. The computational domain is divided into a minimum number of subdomains due to the presence of porous baffles and to ensure star convexity. Higher-order polynomials are used along each subdomain edge to represent the unknown field, i.e., velocity potential. The developed numerical model is validated with the known results in the literature. Subsequently, various results, such as the amplification factor and the forces on the tank wall, are presented and discussed for the effect of configuration, porosity, slosh tank width, depth of baffle submergence, and the space between adjacent baffles. From the parametric study, it is observed that top-mounted baffles enhance sloshing suppression by 50% compared to bottom-mounted vertical baffles, considering all sloshing modes. Assessing the overall effectiveness, top-mounted convex baffle configuration emerges as the most efficient configuration for sloshing suppression, achieving a well-balanced reduction across all modes.
Application of Adaptive Phase-Field Scaled Boundary Finite Element Method for Functionally Graded Materials Aladurthi L. N. Pramod, Hirshikesh, Sundararajan Natarajan, Ean Tat Ooi International Journal of Computational Methods, 2021 In this paper, an adaptive phase-field scaled boundary finite element method for fracture in functionally graded material (FGM) is presented. The model accounts for spatial variation in the material and fracture properties. The quadtree decomposition is adopted for refinement, and the refinement is based on an error indicator evaluated directly from the solutions of the scaled boundary finite element method. This combination makes it a suitable choice to study fracture using the phase field method, as it reduces the mesh burden. A few standard benchmark numerical examples are solved to demonstrate the improvement in computational efficiency in terms of the number of degrees of freedom.
