Finite Element Model Developed for Coupled Chemical-Mechanical-Thermal Contact with Bonding and Debonding
Researchers have developed a finite element formulation that simulates coupled chemical, mechanical, and thermal interactions at contact interfaces, with particular focus on bonding and debonding processes. The model extends previous contact theory by incorporating six coupled fields including deformation, temperature, and interfacial bonding variables governed by energy dissipation. The work demonstrates applications to complex scenarios including pressure-dependent bonding, exothermic reactions, and thermal effects, with potential relevance to materials science and engineering design.
A new finite element formulation has been presented for modeling large deformation contact between bodies while accounting for coupled chemical, mechanical, and thermal effects. The approach builds on established contact theory and tracks six separate but interrelated fields: deformation and temperature of each contacting body, plus interfacial bonding state and interfacial temperature. The interfacial temperature and bonding evolution are governed by chemical and mechanical energy dissipation at the contact interface. The researchers propose several elementary models based on quadratic contact potentials and demonstrate the formulation's versatility through examples including pressure- and gap-dependent bonding, exothermic bonding reactions, thermal hardening, thermal expansion, and simultaneous bonding-debonding scenarios. The implementation uses both classical and isogeometric finite element shape functions with implicit time integration and full linearization for Newton-Raphson solution methods.
What's missing
The study does not discuss computational cost or scalability of the monolithic implementation, nor does it provide quantitative validation against experimental data for the proposed bonding models. The limitations of the quadratic contact potential assumption and the range of applicability for the elementary bonding models are not explicitly addressed.
What different sources said
- arXiv physicsCenter
A coupled finite element formulation for chemo-mechano-thermodynamical contact and its application to bonding and debonding
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