Stewart Silling
Lehigh University
Presenting in Track 4: Advanced Materials: Design, Processing, Characterization and Applications
Presentation Title: Modeling Damage and Fracture with Peridynamics
Abstract: Over its 26-year history, the peridynamic theory of solid mechanics has provided capabilities for modeling phenomena that are challenging when treated using standard methods. This talk provides a general background on the theory, focusing on its unique way of predicting material failure due to the progression of damage and fracture.
Peridynamics is a nonlocal theory that does not require the differentiability of the displacement field, thus providing an opportunity to model singularities such as cracks within its basic field equations, thereby minimizing the need for special techniques. This generality allows a seamless transition from a continuous material under loading, to continuous damage, to defect nucleation, to crack initiation, to macroscopic failure.
Damage evolution is embedded in a thermodynamic framework that ensures consistency between the mechanical response and the First and Second Laws expressed in nonlocal form. It is shown that the peridynamic equations reduce to those of classical solid mechanics in the limit of a large length scale. But processes in the model occurring at smaller length scales can behave differently, allowing more realistic modeling of deformation and diffusive transport at the microscale and mesoscale.
The main features of the theory are described in this talk and its capabilities are demonstrated through examples drawn from diverse applications in industry. The nature, appropriateness, and consequences of nonlocality in a mechanics model are discussed.
Biography: Stewart Silling recently retired after a 35-year career at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He has a Ph.D. in applied mechanics from the California Institute of Technology. His research is in theoretical and computational mechanics. Dr. Silling is known primarily as an originator and developer of the peridynamic theory of solid mechanics. He has a broad range of experience in the computer modeling of applications in industry and was a Visiting Scholar at The Boeing Company. He was awarded the Ted Belytschko Medal by the U.S. Association for Computational Mechanics in 2015. Dr. Silling was a founding co-editor of the Journal of Peridynamics and Nonlocal Modeling, published by Springer Nature. He currently has an appointment as Visiting Collaborator at the Department of Mathematics at Lehigh University and is writing a book about peridynamics.