Event

Martin Fagerström, Department of Applied Mechanics, Chalmers University of Technology, welcomes you to his docent lecture.

Lecture Title: Computational Failure Mechanics - Challenges, Trends and Results

Abstract

Transportation road vehicles, aircraft and sea vessels all need to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and increase energy efficiency. To realise these improvements, weight reduction is a key. As a consequence, an increased share in usage of lightweight metals and fibre reinforced polymer composites in highly optimised structural designs by industry is of highest priority. Thereby, lightweighting can be achieved by using less material while still obtaining the same component performance.  At the same time, more and more of the manufacturing process and product developments are driven by simulations, whereby accurate models of the material and structural performance and strength is of importance.

A crucial aspect is the prediction of failure initiation and propagation, where the utilised models and methods need to be both accurate and computationally efficient; accurate in order to provide a realistic response and efficient in order to enable the numerical assessment of larger components and structures without requiring excessive simulation times. The presentation intends to give an overview of the research developments of models and methods which address both these aspects, sometimes one more than the other. Different concepts adopted in the current research such as cohesive zone modelling of failure and the eXtended Finite Element Method (XFEM) for mesh independent FE analyses of crack propagation will be discussed and compared to other approaches presented in the literature. Some of the important results from the research will be highlighted.
 

Martin Fagerström defended his thesis on the modelling of crack propagation based on the eXtended Finite Element Method (XFEM) in 2007 at the Department of Applied Mechanics. After working as a Structural Analyst consultant for one and a half year, he returned to Chalmers in 2009 to continue the research on developing computational models and methods for simulating failure in various types of materials and structures.

In current focus are the prediction of failure progression in lightweight materials and structures and he is one out of six excellence researchers on material modelling selected within the Swedish multi-sectorial lightweight arena LIGHTer. Martin is also Competence Area Leader for "Structures and Materials" at SAFER Vehicle and Traffic Safety Centre at Chalmers, responsible for the coordination of material and structure related research issues with respect to traffic safety. On the teaching side, Martin is active in the developments and continuous improvements, primarily regarding the master course in Composite Mechanics for which he is main responsible.