An SPIM-FEM coupling strategy for damage modelling

Resumo

This paper proposes a coupling strategy between the finite element method (FEM) and meshfree meth-
ods belonging to the family of Smoothed Point Interpolation Methods (SPIMs), to analyse two-dimensional prob-
lems with scalar damage. Starting from a model that is fully discretised by the FEM, the proposed strategy is

capable to identify the regions where nonlinear phenomena occour, and to convert the FEM mesh to an SPIM
discretisation in such regions, in order to obtain a coupled FEM-SPIM model. When the FEM mesh is replaced,

the SPIM discretisation is built using the original FEM nodes and additional nodes, in order to improve the ap-
proximation in the nonlinear regions. The characteristics of the proposed approach are illustrated with a set of

numerical simulations, comparing the results of the coupled model with the results of full FEM and SPIM models.