Computational Micro- and Nanomechanics

The research effort in this topic is focused on the multiscale modeling and simulation of nanomaterials and nanostructures. Recently, we have developed a new multiscale paradigm for mechanical analysis of nanostructures. In this approach, a nanostructure is decomposed top-down into substructures. Atomistic descriptions are employed to model the mechanical behavior of the substructures where "nano effects" are significant (referred to as the atomistic substructures), while continuum descriptions are employed for the substructures behave more like bulk material (referred to as the continuum substructures). A component mode synthesis (CMS) technique is employed to link the atomistic and continuum substructures for mechanical analysis. This approach can also be extended to multiple levels of substructures to further improve the computational efficiency. We refer to this approach as the Multilevel Component Mode Synthesis (MCMS) approach. The CMS based multiscale approach allows the individual substructures to each be independently modeled, arbitrarily combined, and combined system response rapidly calculated to determine the global mechanical behavior. The MCMS has significant condensation and scaling advantages, and it is well suited for modeling and simulation of large and complex systems.


Sponsor: National Science Foundation (NSF)
Related Publications:
  1. J. Lan and G. Li, "A Multiscale Component Mode Synthesis Approach for Dynamic Analysis of Nanostructures" International Journal of Numerical Methods in Engineering, vol. 92, no. 1, pp. 79-98, 2012.(full text)
  2. P. Chakravarthy and G. Li, "On Particle Impact Induced Bond Breaking of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes," World Journal of Engineering, ICCE-19 special issue, supplement 1, 2011.(full text)
  3. G. Li, "A Multilevel Component Mode Synthesis Approach for the Calculation of the Phonon Density of States of Nanocomposite Structures," Computational Mechanics, vol. 42, no. 4, pp. 593-606, 2008. (full text)
  4. Z. Tang, H. Zhao, G. Li and N. R. Aluru, ``Finite-temperature Quasicontinuum Method for Multiscale Analysis of Silicon Nanostructures'', Physical Review B, vol. 74, no. 6, art. no. 064110, 2006. (full text)