Ferienakademie 2011, Course 5
Meshfree Methods in Crash Simulations

One of the major challenges in crash simulation is of course the fact that the object to be crashed, e.g. a beautiful car before impact, undergoes rather large deformation—into a useless pile of metal after impact . Moreover, to ensure passenger safety cars today are equipped e.g. with airbags which are inflated upon impact at very high speed—another example of very complex and large deformation behavior. The simulation of such deformation behavior with classical simulation techniques such as Finite Element Methods is not trivial since these schemes rely on the availability of a valid computational mesh. However large deformation and meshes do not mix well.

Meshfree methods are a modern class of computational methods specifically designed to deal with large deformation. They rely on a particle description of the problem at hand and thus avoid all (or most) of the challenges involved with mesh deformation. Unfortunately these methods come with a zoo of acronyms (SPH, FPM, MPM, PUM, …) —but luckily there are many common features among these variants of particle and meshfree methods.

We will cover these issues from an engineering point of view as well as from a computational point of view with the application crash simulation in mind. The main goal of the course is to bring together students from mathematics, physics, informatics, and engineering and to learn from each other. Hence, you should bring with you a wish to meet and work with students from the other fields, to learn not only about new methods but also about different expertise and “culture” in the different disciplines—and how to successfully combine these.

Moreover, the scientific program is only one aspect of the course. There will be enough time to hike and enjoy the mountains in good company!

Stefan Zimmer, 18. März 2011 - Impressum