| The stress analysis of damage or degeneracies in structures and structural components may be a topic of great relevance for the safety of a complex structural system. Common forms of such degeneracies in infrastructure systems may be cracks, holes, grooves, geometric imperfections, and several others depending on the constitutive material and the structural shape. Thin-walled structures employed in civil engineering are highly sensitive to such degeneracies, and at the same time they often suffer from damage due to ambient actions. Thus, it is of great importance to predict the consequences of degeneracies on the behavior of a thin-walled structure.; This research focuses on the development of an efficient way to take into account the interaction of many degeneracies with limited computer resources. To model the problem, an alternating algorithm is employed to carry out the interactions as a set of simple analysis on one degeneracy. Thus, solutions that include just one degeneracy (circular holes) but extend over the whole domain of study are employed together with conditions to be satisfied in the vicinity of other degeneracies. The alternating algorithm can be tackled by means of sequential or parallel computing. The computational system has been developed using AutoCAD as a platform and a set of tools was developed using the computer language LISP.; The specific case initially studied is a two dimensional elastic plate with degeneracies in the form of circular holes. A uniformly distributed stress is applied far enough from the circular holes so that there is no interaction between the stress applied and the circular holes.; The results of the model proposed in this research were compared with the results obtained by other models that use finite element analysis (ANSYS, ALGOR). The results obtained with both approximations were very similar. |
