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- ItemCharacterisation and FE Modelling of the Sorption and Swelling Behaviour of Polyamide 6 in Water(Basel : MDPI, 2021) Sambale, Anna Katharina; Stanko, Michael; Emde, Jessica; Stommel, MarkusPolyamide 6 (PA6) is known to absorb water from its environment due to its chemical structure. This water absorption leads to a change in the mechanical properties as well as an increase in volume (swelling) of the polyamide. In the present work, the sorption and swelling behaviour of polyamide 6 in different conditioning environments was experimentally investigated on different part geometries to develop a finite element (FE) method on the basis of the measured data that numerically calculates the sorption and swelling behaviour. The developed method includes two analyses using the Abaqus software. Both the concentration-dependent implementation of the simulation parameters and the calculation of swelling-induced stresses are performed. This enables the modelling of the sorption curves until maximum saturation is reached and the simulation of the characteristic S-shaped swelling curves. Therefore, the developed methodology represents an efficient method for predicting the sorption and swelling behaviour of polyamide 6 parts during conditioning in a water bath. The determined properties provide the basis for the development of an FE-based simulation environment to take moisture absorption into account during the part design. This enables the calculation of moisture-induced swelling processes and the resulting initial stresses in a given part.
- ItemSpinning of Endless Bioactive Silicate Glass Fibres for Fibre Reinforcement Applications(Basel : MDPI, 2021) Eichhorn, Julia; Elschner, Cindy; Groß, Martin; Reichenbächer, Rudi; Herrera Martín, Aarón X.; Prates Soares, Ana; Fischer, Heilwig; Kulkova, Julia; Moritz, Niko; Hupa, Leena; Stommel, Markus; Scheffler, Christina; Kilo, MartinBioactive glasses have been used for many years in the human body as bone substitute. Since bioactive glasses are not readily available in the form of endless thin fibres with diameters below 20 µm, their use is limited to mainly non-load-bearing applications in the form of particles or granules. In this study, the spinnability of four bioactive silicate glasses was evaluated in terms of crystallisation behaviour, characteristic processing temperatures and viscosity determined by thermal analysis. The glass melts were drawn into fibres and their mechanical strength was measured by single fibre tensile tests before and after the surface treatment with different silanes. The degradation of the bioactive glasses was observed in simulated body fluid and pure water by recording the changes of the pH value and the ion concentration by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry; further, the glass degradation process was monitored by scanning electron microscopy. Additionally, first in vitro experiments using murine pre-osteoblast cell line MC3T3E1 were carried out in order to evaluate the interaction with the glass fibre surface. The results achieved in this work show up the potential of the manufacturing of endless bioactive glass fibres with appropriate mechanical strength to be applied as reinforcing fibres in new innovative medical implants.
- ItemVisualization of Tensor Fields in Mechanics(Oxford : Wiley-Blackwell, 2021) Hergl, Chiara; Blecha, Christian; Kretzschmar, Vanessa; Raith, Felix; Günther, Fabian; Stommel, Markus; Jankowai, Jochen; Hotz, Ingrid; Nagel, Thomas; Scheuermann, GerikTensors are used to describe complex physical processes in many applications. Examples include the distribution of stresses in technical materials, acting forces during seismic events, or remodeling of biological tissues. While tensors encode such complex information mathematically precisely, the semantic interpretation of a tensor is challenging. Visualization can be beneficial here and is frequently used by domain experts. Typical strategies include the use of glyphs, color plots, lines, and isosurfaces. However, data complexity is nowadays accompanied by the sheer amount of data produced by large-scale simulations and adds another level of obstruction between user and data. Given the limitations of traditional methods, and the extra cognitive effort of simple methods, more advanced tensor field visualization approaches have been the focus of this work. This survey aims to provide an overview of recent research results with a strong application-oriented focus, targeting applications based on continuum mechanics, namely the fields of structural, bio-, and geomechanics. As such, the survey is complementing and extending previously published surveys. Its utility is twofold: (i) It serves as basis for the visualization community to get an overview of recent visualization techniques. (ii) It emphasizes and explains the necessity for further research for visualizations in this context.
- ItemPrediction of Short Fiber Composite Properties by an Artificial Neural Network Trained on an RVE Database(Basel : MDPI, 2021) Breuer, Kevin; Stommel, MarkusIn this study, an artificial neural network is designed and trained to predict the elastic properties of short fiber reinforced plastics. The results of finite element simulations of three-dimensional representative volume elements are used as a data basis for the neural network. The fiber volume fraction, fiber length, matrix-phase properties, and fiber orientation are varied so that the neural network can be used within a very wide range of parameters. A comparison of the predictions of the neural network with additional finite element simulations shows that the stiffnesses of short fiber reinforced plastics can be predicted very well by the neural network. The average prediction accuracy is equal or better than by a two-step homogenization using the classical method of Mori and Tanaka. Moreover, it is shown that the training of the neural network on an extended data set works well and that particularly calculation-intensive data points can be avoided without loss of prediction quality.
- ItemStatistical Analysis of Mechanical Stressing in Short Fiber Reinforced Composites by Means of Statistical and Representative Volume Elements(Basel : MDPI, 2021) Breuer, Kevin; Spickenheuer, Axel; Stommel, MarkusAnalyzing representative volume elements with the finite element method is one method to calculate the local stress at the microscale of short fiber reinforced plastics. It can be shown with Monte-Carlo simulations that the stress distribution depends on the local arrangement of the fibers and is therefore unique for each fiber constellation. In this contribution the stress distribution and the effective composite properties are examined as a function of the considered volume of the representative volume elements. Moreover, the influence of locally varying fiber volume fraction is examined, using statistical volume elements. The results show that the average stress probability distribution is independent of the number of fibers and independent of local fluctuation of the fiber volume fraction. Furthermore, it is derived from the stress distributions that the statistical deviation of the effective composite properties should not be neglected in the case of injection molded components. A finite element analysis indicates that the macroscopic stresses and strains on component level are significantly influenced by local, statistical fluctuation of the composite properties.
- ItemCharacterisation and Modelling of Moisture Gradients in Polyamide 6(Basel : MDPI, 2021) Sambale, Anna Katharina; Maisl, Michael; Herrmann, Hans-Georg; Stommel, MarkusPolyamide 6 (PA6) is able to absorb water from the surrounding air and bond to it by forming hydrogen bonds between the carbonamide groups of its molecular chains. Diffusion processes cause locally different water concentrations in the (component) cross-section during the sorption process, resulting in locally different mechanical properties due to the water-induced plasticisation effect. However, the water content of PA6 is usually specified as an integral value, so no information about a local water distribution within a component is provided. This paper shows a method to characterise moisture distributions within PA6 samples using low-energy computer tomography (CT) techniques and comparing the reconstructed results with a developed finite elements (FE) modelling method based on Fick’s diffusion laws with concentration-dependent diffusion coefficients. For this purpose, the ageing of the samples at two different water bath temperatures as well as at different integral water contents are considered. The results obtained by CT reconstruction and FE modelling are in very good agreement, so that the concentration distributions by water sorption of PA6 calculated by FEM can be regarded as validated.
- ItemDetermination of Strain Limits for Dimensioning Polyurethane Components(Basel : MDPI, 2021) Stanko, Michael; Lehmenkühler, Peter; Stommel, MarkusWithin the scope of this contribution, a method for the determination of a strain limit for designing components made of elastomeric polyurethane systems is presented. The knowledge of a material-specific strain limit is essential for the structural-mechanical calculation of plastic components in the context of component design. Compared to a commonly used component design, based on a simplified dimensioning approach taking only linear viscoelastic deformations into account, the strain limit determined in this study allows an improved utilisation of lightweight construction potential in the dimensioning of technical components made of polyurethanes through the consideration of permissible nonlinear viscoelastic deformations. The test method comprises a sequence of quasi-static loading and unloading cycles, with a subsequent load-free recovery phase, allowing the relaxation of the viscoelastic forces. Standardised tensile and simple shear test specimens and a dynamic mechanical thermal analyser (DMTA) are used within the tests. The strain limit is determined by means of the so-called residual energy ratio, which is a characteristic quantity for the evaluation of hystereses of load–unload cycles. These hystereses are increasingly formed by deformations outside the range of linear viscoelastic deformations. The residual energy ratio relates the proportion of deformation energy recovered during unloading to the deformation work that is applied. In this contribution, the residual energy ratio is successfully used to detect a significant evolution of loss energy under increasing load and to correlate this transition to a characteristic strain. The latter is used as a dimensioning parameter for the design of components made of elastomeric polyurethane materials for quasi-static load cases. The determination of this strain limit is performed under consideration of the criterion of reversibility of deformation.