INTEGRATED COMPUTATIONAL ALGORITHMS TO TREAT FRACTURE AND FRAGMENTATION: Development of Software, Based on the Truly Meshless Local Petrov-Galerkin (M

The Meshless Local Petrov-Galerkin (MLPG) methods will be developed for solving three dimensional nonlinear dynamic problems, with large plastic deformations, to simulate metallic and brittle materials under high-speed impact loads. The general MLPG approach will be applied to the system of governing equations, including the equilibrium equations and energy conservation equations, over the local sub-domains . The nonlinear thermodynamic constitutive models and equation of state models, will be developed to describe the material responses, using the MLPG methods. The damage model will be investigated for characterizing the high-strain-rate material behavior, and for the development of fragmentation, under impact-loading. The contact algorithms, and those for crack initiation and propagation, will be developed for the explicit dynamic code, by incorporating the adaptive node refining and coarsening algorithms. The MLPG computational code will be developed for the full-scale numerical simulation of blast and penetration problems. The graphical pre and post processors will be developed and fully integrated into the high-end industry- products, which are available in the commercial market.