• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.25 no.11
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• pp.1785-1795
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• 2001

A multi-layered brick element fur the finite element method is developed for analyzing the three-dim-ensionally layered composite structures subjected to both thermal and mechanical boundary conditions. The element has eight nodes with one degree of freedom for the temperature and three for the display-ements at each node, and can contain arbitrary number of layers with different material properties with-in the element; the conventional element should contain one material within an element. Thus the total number of nodes and elements, which are needed to analyze the multi-layered composite structures, can be tremendously reduced. In solving the global equation, a partitioning technique is used to obtain the temperature and the displacements which are caused by both the mechanical boundary conditions and temperature distributions. The results by using the developed element are compared wish the commercial package, ANSYS and the conventional finite element methods, and they are in good agreement. It is also shown that the Number of nodes and elements can be tremendously reduced using the element without losing the numerical accuracies.

• Composites Research
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.98-109
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• 1999

An investigation has been performed to develop a nonlinear finire element method for the analysis of the long-term behavior of an artificial hip joint. The three dimensional multi-layered brick element is used to analyze the design performances of hip prodtheses with various materials and the thick laminated composite hip prostheses with various layup sequences. The used element can accommodate the varying material properties of the element and allow the ply-drop-off along the eleement edge. The nonlinear finite element analysis program has been verified by the comparison with the exact solution of the bean problem subjected to uniaxial loading. By using the program, the density changes and strength ratios of artificial hip joint are calculated according to the hip prosthesis materials and the layers of composite hip prosthesis. The numerical results are easily applied to evaluate design performances of a hip prosthesis, and decrease the difficulty and time of hip prosthesis design.