A posteriori error estimations for the generalized finite element method and modified versions

• Autor(a) principal: Rafael Marques Lins
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.11606/T.18.2015.tde-03092015-083839

This thesis investigates two a posteriori error estimators, based on gradient recovery, aiming to fill the gap of the error estimations for the Generalized FEM (GFEM) and, mainly, its modified versions called Corrected XFEM (C-XFEM) and Stable GFEM (SGFEM). In order to reach this purpose, firstly, brief reviews regarding the GFEM and its modified versions are presented, where the main advantages attributed to each numerical method are highlighted. Then, some important concepts related to the error study are presented. Furthermore, some contributions involving a posteriori error estimations for the GFEM are shortly described. Afterwards, the two error estimators hereby proposed are addressed focusing on linear elastic fracture mechanics problems. The first estimator was originally proposed for the C-XFEM and is hereby extended to the SGFEM framework. The second one is based on a splitting of the recovered stress field into two distinct parts: singular and smooth. The singular part is computed with the help of the J integral, whereas the smooth one is calculated from a combination between the Superconvergent Patch Recovery (SPR) and Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) techniques. Finally, various numerical examples are selected to assess the robustness of the error estimators considering different enrichment types, versions of the GFEM, solicitant modes and element types. Relevant aspects such as effectivity indexes, error distribution and convergence rates are used for describing the error estimators. The main contributions of this thesis are: the development of two efficient a posteriori error estimators for the GFEM and its modified versions; a comparison between the GFEM and its modified versions; the identification of the positive features of each error estimator and a detailed study concerning the blending element issues.