The present invention relates to structural stress analysis and, more particularly to stress calculations and a scheme for calculating structural stress where the structure contains geometric discontinuities, e.g., welded joints, notches, ridges, bends, sharp corners, etc.
Stress analysis is used primarily in the design of solid structures such as ships, automobiles, aircraft, buildings, bridges, and dams for determining structural behavior and for ascertaining structural viability and integrity under anticipated or foreseeable loads. The analysis may involve the use of an abstract or mathematical model for the representation of the structural system and loads. According to classical analytical idealization, partial differential equations are used. For example, stress in a dam under a hydrostatic load can be described by an elliptic partial differential equation in two spatial dimensions.
As boundary geometry of structural systems is usually complicated, the partial differential equations of structural mechanics typically cannot be solved in the closed analytical exact form. Numerical approximations are sought instead. In one approach, derivatives are replaced with finite differences. Other methods are based on finding an approximation as a linear combination of preassigned functions such as polynomials or trigonometric functions. Also, after a domain or a boundary of interest has been discretized in the form of a large number of small elements, a piece-wise approximation can be sought according to the finite element method.
Current methods of stress analysis based upon numeric approximations and extrapolation are often subject to substantial uncertainties in regions of close proximity to welds, joints, sudden changes of geometry, or other structural or geometric discontinuities and are highly dependent on element size and are typically mesh dependent, particularly if drastically different loading modes are considered. Accordingly, there is a need for an improved structural stress analysis scheme for fatigue prediction that effectively eliminates or minimizes mesh dependency.