Resumo em Inglês:

The present work describes an alternative methodology for identification of aeroelastic stability in a range of varying parameters. Analysis is performed in time domain based on Lyapunov stability and solved by convex optimization algorithms. The theory is outlined and simulations are carried out on a benchmark system to illustrate the method. The classical methodology with the analysis of the system's eigenvalues is presented for comparing the results and validating the approach. The aeroelastic model is represented in state space format and the unsteady aerodynamic forces are written in time domain using rational function approximation. The problem is formulated as a polytopic differential inclusion system and the conceptual idea can be used in two different applications. In the first application the method verifies the aeroelastic stability in a range of air density (or its equivalent altitude range). In the second one, the stability is verified for a rage of velocities. These analyses are in contrast to the classical discrete analysis performed at fixed air density/velocity values. It is shown that this method is efficient to identify stability regions in the flight envelope and it offers promise for robust flutter identification.

Resumo em Inglês:

The use of piezoelectric materials for the development of electromechanical devices for the harvesting or scavenging of ambient vibrations has been extensively studied over the last decade. The energy conversion from mechanical (vibratory) to electrical energy is provided by the electromechanical coupling between mechanical strains/stresses and electric charges/voltages in the piezoelectric material. The majority of the studies found in the open literature present a tip-mass cantilever piezoelectric device tuned on the operating frequency. Although recent results show that these devices can be quite effective for harvesting small amounts of electrical energy, little has been published on the robustness of these devices or on the effect of parametric uncertainties on the energy harvested. This work focuses on a cantilever plate with bonded piezoelectric patches and a tip-mass serving as an energy harvesting device. The rectifier and storage electric circuit was replaced by a resistive circuit (R). In addition, an alternative to improve the harvesting performance by adding an inductance in series to the harvesting circuit, thus leading to a resonant circuit (RL), is considered. A coupled finite element model leading to mechanical (displacements) and electrical (charges at electrodes) degrees of freedom is considered. An analysis of the effect of parametric uncertainties of the device on the electric output is performed. Piezoelectric and dielectric constants of the piezoelectric active layers and electric circuit equivalent inductance are considered as stochastic parameters. Mean and confidence intervals of the electric output are evaluated.

Resumo em Inglês:

Polynomial Chaos Expansion (PCE) is widely recognized as a flexible tool to represent different types of random variables/processes. However, applications to real, experimental data are still limited. In this article, PCE is used to represent the random time-evolution of metal corrosion growth in marine environments. The PCE coefficients are determined in order to represent data of 45 corrosion coupons tested by Jeffrey and Melchers (2001) at Taylors Beach, Australia. Accuracy of the representation and possibilities for model extrapolation are considered in the study. Results show that reasonably accurate smooth representations of the corrosion process can be obtained. The representation is not better because a smooth model is used to represent non-smooth corrosion data. Random corrosion leads to time-variant reliability problems, due to resistance degradation over time. Time variant reliability problems are not trivial to solve, especially under random process loading. Two example problems are solved herein, showing how the developed PCE representations can be employed in reliability analysis of structures subject to marine corrosion. Monte Carlo Simulation is used to solve the resulting time-variant reliability problems. However, an accurate and more computationally efficient solution is also presented.

Resumo em Inglês:

The requirements of production engineering for a precision hole are to ensure the required quality as well as minimal production costs. The interactions between machine, tool and the pre-drilled hole result in uncertainties during the final reaming process. For this purpose the reaming process itself and the appearance of process faults were focused in a large number of publications. Due to the fact that the reaming process is an inherent part of a process chain and thus directly linked to a pre-machining process (drilling process), the influence of a pre-drilled hole is neglected till date. For that reason the present paper deals with the influence of a diagonal pre-drilled hole on the reaming process with multi blade tools. Pretests show that the radial deviation of the pre-drilled hole seems to be an important input parameter for the reaming process within the process chain. Based on this new input parameter the question whether the reaming tool follows the path of the pre-drilled hole or not has arisen. To achieve a better understanding of this issue, cutting tests were accomplished to investigate this influence. For this purpose, holes with different radial deviations were manufactured on a five axis machining center and reamed in a second step. The bored holes were evaluated with the help of a coordinate measuring machine and compared with ideal results. Thus the present paper highlights cause and effect relationships within the process chain drilling/reaming. In addition, a further clamping system with an increased stiffness is also examined to decrease the effects of uncertainties. Furthermore, the results were compared with an open loop chip cross section simulation.

Resumo em Inglês:

Flexible rotors are characterized by inherent uncertainties affecting the parameters that influence the dynamic responses of the system. In this context, the handling of variability in rotor dynamics is a natural and necessary extension of the modeling capability of the existing techniques of deterministic analysis. Among the various methods used to model uncertainties, the stochastic finite element method has received major attention, as it is well adapted for applications involving complex engineering systems of industrial interest. In the present contribution, the stochastic finite element method applied to a flexible rotor system, with random parameters modeled as random fields is presented. The uncertainties are modeled as homogeneous Gaussian stochastic fields and are discretized according to the spectral method by using Karhunen-Loève expansions. The modeling procedure is confined to the frequency and time domain analyses, in which the envelopes of frequency response functions, the Campbell's diagram and the orbits of the stochastic flexible rotor system are generated. Also, Monte Carlo simulation method combined with the Latin Hypercube sampling is used as stochastic solver. After the presentation of the underlying theoretical formulations, numerical applications of moderate complexity are presented and discussed aiming at demonstrating the main features of the stochastic modeling procedure of flexible rotor systems.

Resumo em Inglês:

Acoustic holography and holophony, wave field synthesis and active noise control are based on common elements which are causality, model, objective, and regularization. In the frequency domain (putting causality aside), a simple formulation states the influence - not the interaction - of errors of the model and objective and of regularization of the results. However, it does not give either an understanding or any relation of cause to effect. When the objective can be reached using the available model, regularization is not needed and the information liable to be extracted from this determined problem is poor, unlike in the over-determined case when the model does not allow the objective to be reached. The geometrical interpretation of the over-determined problem written in the least-mean square sense could be a tool to enlighten the influences and interactions in question. After having shown the interest of the geometrical interpretation, a pseudo-analytical inverse problem in spherical holophony and a numerical problem in plane holography provide particular illustrations. From among the properties accessible, one is highlighted: in the case of a perfect objective but inaccurate model, its adaptation brings a decrease in the amount of regularization required and an improvement in the results.

Resumo em Inglês:

Within this paper the combination of several methods, developed and used in Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 805 - "Control of Uncertainties in Load Carrying Systems in Mechanical Engineering" of the DFG (German Research Foundation), is used to demonstrate the development of a load carrying system under uncertainty. The development starts with the identification of relevant uncertainties, followed by a conceptual design and a mathematical robust optimization approach. The optimized structure is used for the layout of a 3D-CAD-model which is used to print a real rapid-prototyping-model. Throughout the whole design process uncertainties are considered. To demonstrate the symbiosis of these methods an example is chosen. Usually, CRC 805 deals with load carrying systems in mechanical engineering. To let this topic become more vivid and to show that the methods can be transferred to other fields, the design of a robust high heel is taken as an example. At the end of the work three high heels are developed and evaluated regarding their robustness against uncertainties.

Resumo em Inglês:

The use of numerical simulation in the design and evaluation of products performance is ever increasing. To a greater extent, such estimates are needed in a early design stage, when physical prototypes are not available. When dealing with vibro-acoustic models, known to be computationally expensive, a question remains, which is related to the accuracy of such models in view of the well-know variability inherent to the mass manufacturing production techniques. In addition, both academia and industry have recently realized the importance of actually listening to a products sound, either by measurements or by virtual sound synthesis, in order to assess its performance. In this work, the scatter of significant parameter variations on a simplified vehicle vibro-acoustic model is calculated on loudness metrics using Monte Carlo analysis. The mapping from the system parameters to sound quality metric is performed by a fully-coupled vibro-acoustic finite element model. Different loudness metrics are used, including overall sound pressure level expressed in dB and Specific Loudness in Sones. Sound quality equivalent sources are used to excite this model and the sound pressure level at the driver's head position is acquired to be evaluated according to sound quality metrics. No significant variation has been perceived when evaluating the system using regular sound pressure level expressed in in dB and dB(A). This happens because of the third-octave filters that averages the results under some frequency bands. On the other hand, Zwicker Loudness presents important variations, arguably, due to the masking effects.

Resumo em Inglês:

In this article a non-linear model for dynamic analysis of rotating thin-walled composite beams is introduced. The theory is deduced in the context of classic variational principles and the finite element method is employed to discretize and furnish a numerical approximation to the motion equations. The model considers shear flexibility as well as non-linear inertial terms, Coriolis' effects, among others. The clamping stiffness of the beam to the rotating hub is modeled through a set of spring factors. The model serves as a mean deterministic basis to the studies of stochastic dynamics, which are the objective of the present article. Uncertainties should be considered in order to improve the predictability of a given modeling scheme. In a rotating structural system, uncertainties are present due to a number of facts, namely, loads, material properties, etc. In this study the uncertainties are incorporated in the beam-to-hub connection (i.e. the connection angle and the springs) and the rotating velocity. The probability density functions of the uncertain parameters are derived employing the Maximum Entropy Principle. Different numerical studies are conducted to show the main characteristics of the uncertainty propagation in the dynamics of rotating composite beams.

Resumo em Inglês:

This work investigates the influence of physical and geometrical system parameters uncertainties and excitation noise on the nonlinear vibrations and stability of simply-supported cylindrical shells. These parameters are composed of both deterministic and random terms. Donnell's non-linear shallow shell theory is used to study the non-linear vibrations of the shell. To discretize the partial differential equations of motion, first, a general expression for the transversal displacement is obtained by a perturbation procedure which identifies all modes that couple with the linear modes through the quadratic and cubic nonlinearities. Then, a particular solution is selected which ensures the convergence of the response up to very large deflections. Finally, the in-plane displacements are obtained as a function of the transversal displacement by solving the in-plane equations analytically and imposing the necessary boundary, continuity and symmetry conditions. Substituting the obtained modal expansions into the equation of motion and applying the Galerkin's method, a discrete system in time domain is obtained. Several numerical strategies are used to study the nonlinear behavior of the shell considering the uncertainties in the physical and geometrical system parameters. Special attention is given to the influence of the uncertainties on the parametric instability and escape boundaries.

Resumo em Inglês:

Technical systems are often modeled through systems of differential equations in which the parameters and initial conditions are subject to uncertainties. Usually, special solutions of the differential equations like equilibrium positions and periodic orbits are of importance and frequently the corresponding equations are only set up with the intent to describe the behavior in the vicinity of a limit cycle or an equilibrium position. For the validity of the analysis it must therefore be assumed that the initial conditions lie indeed in the basins of attraction of the corresponding attractors. In order to estimate basins of attraction, Lyapunov functions can be used. However, there are no systematic approaches available for the construction of Lyapunov functions with the goal to achieve a good approximation of the basin of attraction. The present paper suggests a method for defining appropriate Lyapunov functions using insight from center manifold theory. With this approach, not only variations in the initial conditions, but also in the parameters can be studied. The results are used to calculate the likelihood for the system to reach a certain attractor assuming different random distributions for the initial conditions.

Resumo em Inglês:

The operating environment of tidal stream turbines is random due to the variability of the sea flow (turbulence, wake, tide, streams, among others). This yields complex time-varying random loadings, making it necessary to deal with high cycle multiaxial fatigue when designing such structures. It is thus required to apprehend extreme value distributions of stress states, assuming they are stationary multivariate Gaussian processes. This work focus on such distributions, addressing their numerical simulation with an analytical description. For that, we first focused on generating one-dimensional Gaussian processes, considering a band-limited white noise in both the narrow-band and the wide-band cases. We then fitted the resulting extreme value distributions with GEV distributions. We secondly extended the generation method to the correlated two-dimensional case, in which the joint extreme value distribution can be obtained from the associated margins. Finally, an example of application related to tidal stream turbines introduces a Bretschneider spectrum, whose shape is commonly encountered in the field of hydrology. Comparing the empirical calculations with the GEV fits for the extreme value distributions shows a very well agreement between the results.