Revistas

Sintering is a high temperature process for the consolidation of ceramic, metal and polymer powders. The Discrete Element Method (DEM) has been effectively used to model the sintering process at the particle scale considering spherical particles. However, standard manufacturing processes rarely deal with spherical particles. As sintering is a curvature-controlled process, it is important to take into account the deviation from sphericity. This study presents a DEM sintering model for non-spherical particles. The description and dynamic evolution of arbitrary shape particles is achieved by using the Level Set discrete element method (LS-DEM). The original LS-DEM approach uses boundary nodes on the particles to detect contacts. We employ an optimization-based contact detection approach. This improves the capture of small contacts, which is important for a correct description of sintering evolution with reasonable CPU-time consumption. A Newton-Raphson scheme is employed for the optimization algorithm. The normal force and neck size evolution expressions of spherical particles are adapted for arbitrary shape particles by using the local curvature at the contact. The developed model is validated for elastic contacts on superquadric ellipsoids. It is compared with standard DEM on spheres for sintering. The model is applied to investigate the consolidation kinetics of a packing of ellipsoidal particles. It is shown, that a deviation from sphericity is beneficial for both prolate and oblate ellipsoids. An optimum aspect ratio is evaluated, demonstrating that particles that are too elongated slow down densification kinetics.

Paredes-Goyes, Brayan

We extend the problem of finding an optimal structure with maximum load-bearing capacity to the case of multiple materials. We first consider a reinforcement optimization case where the structure consists of a fixed background matrix material with given strength properties and optimize the reinforcement topology within this material. We discuss the use of various isotropic and anisotropic strength criteria to model the reinforcing phase, including reinforcements with discrete orientations. In a second time, we investigate a bi-material formulation where we optimize the topology of two material phases simultaneously. Various choices for the material strength conditions are proposed and we apply this formulation to the optimization of pure tensile and compressive phases of a single material. In all cases, two optimization variants are proposed using concepts of convex optimization and limit analysis theory, namely maximizing the load-bearing capacity under a fixed volume constraint or minimizing the volume under a fixed loading. Both problems are convex and a penalization procedure is proposed. The underlying problems can be solved using conic programming solvers. Illustrative applications demonstrate the versatility of the proposed formulation, including the influence of the selected strength criteria, the possibility to obtain structures with members of fixed orientation or structures with different importance granted to tensile and compressive regions. Finally, we also draw a parallel with the generation of strut-and-tie models for the analysis of reinforced concrete structures.

Mourad, Leyla