On 3rd September 2020 Vicente Mataix has successfully defended his PhD Thesis titled “Innovative mathematical and numerical models for studying the deformation of shells during industrial forming processes with the Finite Element Method” in the framework of Civil Engineering Programme. The thesis, carried out at the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) under the supervision of Profs. Eugenio Oñate and Riccardo Rossi, has obtained a qualification of Excellent Cum Laude.
The PhD Exam Committee was formed by Professors Peter Wriggers (Leibniz University of Hannover), Juan José Ródenas (Technical University of Valencia) and Gabriel Bugeda (Technical University of Catalunya). Prof. Wriggers acted as the Committee Chair.
Vicente Mataix has been working as a researcher at CIMNE until January 2019. Currently, he is a research and support engineer for software development at Inria (France).
PhD Presentation via online
About the thesis
This PhD Thesis aims to contribute to the development of finite element methods for the analysis of stamping processes, a problem area with a clear industrial application.
To achieve the proposed objectives,the first part of this thesis covers the elements of solid-sheet. This type of element is attractive for the simulation of forming processes, since any type of three-dimensional constitutive law can be formulated without the need to consider any additional conjecture. Additionally the contact of both faces can be easily treated. This work first presents the development of a triangular prismatic solid-sheet element for the analysis of thick and thin sheets with the capacity for large deformations. This element is in total Lagrangian formulation, and uses neighboring elements to be able to compute a field of quadratic displacements. In the original formulation, a modified right Cauchy tensor was obtained; however, in this work, the formulation is extended obtaining a modified deformation gradient, which allows the use of push-forward and pull-back concepts. These concepts provide a mathematically consistent method for the definition of temporary derivatives of tensors and, therefore, can be used, for example, to work with elasto-plasticity. This work continues with the development of the contact formulation used, a methodology found in the literature on computational contact mechanics for implicit simulations.
